


oh don't you dare look back (just keep your eyes on me)

by myillusionsgone



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Superhumans, Alternate Universe - mythologial/supernatural beings, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, alternate universe - train station
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:19:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 95,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myillusionsgone/pseuds/myillusionsgone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various one-shots written that were based on tumblr prompts, mostly.<br/>Varying characters, a mixture of OTP and BrOTP works.<br/>Summaries at the beginning of each chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the midnight train, going anywhere ;; silvur

> **_the midnight train, going anywhere_ **
> 
> **Characters:** Silver Fullbuster & Ur
> 
> **Summary:** Somewhere above them, someone was laughing at them. This was out of question.
> 
> **Prompt** : silvur, both missed the train and have to wait three hours together in an empty station at  ~~midnight~~  three am au [because no matter how cool something is at midnight, it gets far cooler at 3 am and I can use personal experience as reference. Never ask about the Berlin trip]

It certainly took someone very special and very brilliant to miss the train and end up at the train station at three in the morning during a rainy night. Especially considering that there would be no other train until the crack of dawn which meant that she was stuck in a cold, deserted train station – somewhere in nowhere – with a phone that was not working and a very suspicious looking man who was sitting on the other side of the chilly waiting hall.

It was not like she was freezing but it was easy to pretend to be cold because so she could wear her coat and keep her fists clenched in her pockets. She had not gotten into a serious fight since high school but she still got it.

(Or so Gildarts said.)

Still, she was on her guard because this had long become a part of her personality. She had always been cautious but for a few weeks now, she was always on her toes, acting like she was afraid of her own shadow. This was not the kind of person she wanted to be. She was not meant to be fragile; she was not supposed to require protection. This was her pride speaking, of course, and her pride was the reason why she had declared her intention to take the train rather than to travel to the north by car like everyone else. Hell, Ivan had even offered her a spot in his car.

But no, she had had to be  _stubborn._

Getting up, she stared at the railway schedule before a frown grew on her face because it had still not changed. The train she had narrowly missed had been the last train for the night and now, she was stuck waiting for the first train. “Oh, c’mon,” she muttered under her breath as she kicked the wall in frustration. “This can’t be  _real_.”

“We’re stuck here until six,” the stranger said as he looked up from his phone. “No worries, I’m not gonna eat you or something.”

She huffed as she glanced over to him. “I wasn’t being scared,” she said as she returned to her own seat. “Just … reasonably wary.”

“I’d say,” he said as he pocketed his phone, “because you kept your fists clenched for the past hour. That’s a pretty  _obvious_  vote of mistrust.”

“I’m a woman who travels alone and is stuck with a complete stranger at a train station in the middle of night,” she said as she rested her feet on her suitcase. She was good at acting casual while really, she was moments from freaking out over something. This was what had earned her the nickname ice queen – she just never seemed to lose her countenance.

“…considering this, staying on your guard is probably smart,” he said after a moment of awkward silence. “So, where are you headed to? Aside from probably the north.”

She was silent for a moment as she stared at her boots before she redirected her glance and looked at him. “…Gentiana,” she said as she yawned. “How about you? North as well?”

“Edelweiss,” he said with a shrug and she raised an eyebrow because most people who travelled northwards did not get that far, they stayed in the more popularised areas and both Gentiana and Edelweiss were contenders for the most northern towns of Fiore. “It’s for work.”

She leaned back, her face halfway hidden by the hood of her coat. “But you  _are_  from the North, aren’t you?” she asked as she raised an eyebrow. “You got the accent … I might even hold myself out of the window and try to guess where exactly your accent’s from.”

“You’re pretty good at hearing it … my co-worker said he couldn’t hear it anymore … well, maybe he was just being polite,” he said as he scratched his neck and finally, as the light stopped flickering and decided to be on, she got a decent glimpse on him. He seemed to be the type business men she could actually stand because opposed to the too-smooth-too-sly men she had to deal with far too frequently, he had the same rugged charm Gildarts had as well and this was strangely comforting.

“I was born and raised in the north, too,” she said as she twisted her bracelet around her wrist. “So I grew up around that accent … and you know what they say, northern people can hear the sound of home from eight generations ago.”

“…I didn’t hear your accent, though,” he admitted as he stretched, a yawn escaping him. “So, what brings you back home?”

She rolled her eyes as she folded her hands in front of her body – she could go back to clenching them into fists in less than a second, anyway – and briefly considered if she still had food in her bag. “My best friend is getting married,” she then said as she cracked her bones. “So I’m going home and try to keep him from losing his mind … given that I ever get there.”

“I’m pretty sure that once the train comes, you’ll be in Gentiana before the sun is really up,” he said as he got up and paced around in the waiting hall. “God, I’m tired.”

“It’s really late, after all,” she agreed as she shoved her scarf into her hood as an improvised pillow. “If I had known I’d be stuck here, I would have driven there by car.”

“If I had known, I would have slept,” he said as he yawned, again. “…you wouldn’t mind if I would sit down a bit closer, yes? I hate yelling across the room.”

“And I hate being yelled at,” she said as she sat up straight, her boots returning to the ground. “I still don’t trust you, however.”

“I guess it’s good then that I am too tired to hit on you,” he said with a smirk that was nearly charming although it was likely not intended to be – she was far too tired herself to think about this right now.

And she was too used to people hitting on her, because she had spent her high school years hiding behind Ivan and Gildarts for a damn good reason. It had not been easy, being one of the few girls at her school and she had been very happy when she had met Layla who was prettier and softer and generally more popular after she had graduated high school.

“People never hit on me twice,” she said as she remembered a time when people had called Ivan and Gildarts her ‘security detail’ because they had always been on her side and she had to admit, the other students had not been far off. Two of the trio had been the security for the third but they had misunderstood who had shielded him. Ur and Gildarts had been the ones to watch Ivan’s back because he had been too busy being a genius to do it himself.

“So you suggest that I shouldn’t waste the sole chance I’ll ever get at hitting on you right now?” he asked and she had to admit, she did like quick-witted men, she even liked them a lot more than she liked those who were always far too polite to be serious.

“I never recommend hitting on me,” she said as she ran a hand through her short hair. “I mean, I wouldn’t hit on me if I had to make the decision … and that should say something about it.”

“You’re pretty confusing, Miss…” he said, dragging out the last word.

“Lund,” she said as she raised an eyebrow, “and you are pretty brave for just assuming the  _miss_.”

“I could say that I got a sense for who’s married and who isn’t but, you know, I saw your hands a moment ago and there was no ring,” he said as he pushed his suitcase through the empty waiting hall before he sat down two seats away from her. “…unless you keep it somewhere else which would prompt the question what would be wrong in your relationship.”

“…you really aren’t afraid to step onto someone’s toes, are you?” she asked after she was taken aback for a second. She had met blunt people – they came easy in her field of work – but he was taking the crown and she was not sure how she was supposed to feel about this. But although she was convinced that she should feel something, she was tired.

“Not when I haven’t slept in twenty-five hours, no,” he said with a shrug before he leaned into her direction, a sly smirk on his lips. “Now, what is it? Complicated relationship or single?”

She rolled her eyes at him before she crossed her arms. “I am rumoured to be unapproachable so single,” she said before she bit her lip. She was tired, too, but her manners were still ingrained into her mind and this made it difficult for her. “…and you, Mister…”

“Fullbuster and single, too,” he said as his smirk grew on his face – to the point that she briefly considered wiping it off with a harsh comment. “Why, Miss Lund, you’d happen to be  _interested_?”

“In your dreams, perhaps,” she said as she cracked a thin smile. No matter how much he was getting on her nerves with his self-confidence that bordered to arrogance, the banter kept her awake and it was a good way to pass time.

“And what a nice dream it must be when it’s about you,” he said, never missing a single beat. “Oh, c’mon, I’m just kidding around …  _mostly_.”

“And here was I going to offer you to wake you when the train arrives … such a shame,” she said with an exaggerated sigh.

“And here I was thinking that you are a nice young lady who’d help out a wary traveller – never have been more wrong about a person in my whole life before,” he said as he rolled his eyes at her. “Seriously, Lund, I can handle this.”

(Ten minutes and a further change of places, his head fell onto her shoulder.)

(Not that she minded, he was rather interesting.)


	2. a cold and broken hallelujah ;; ur & lyon

> _**a cold and broken hallelujah** _
> 
> **_Characters_ ** _: Lyon Vastia, Ur_
> 
> _**Summary:**  It’s quiet and cold, in the end._
> 
> _**Prompt:**  Lyon,  ~~Gray~~  and Ur with “Maybe the times we had, they weren’t that bad/And everything else was part of the plan/We sang: “I don’t know where we go from here” /This is the alpha, omega, beginning and the end/And we all just idolize the dead” _

She is rumoured to be the strongest mage in the northern lands and ten years earlier, that would have been less of a rumour and more of a fact but years have passed and she is no longer the same. She has grown up and she has learned her lessons. She is not always happy, these days, but she is content and actually, this is all she has ever asked for. She does not need be happy because if someone is happy, the absence of happiness will be more painful. And she has had her fair share of pain in the past years.

So she smiles and says that she is ‘okay’ and this is the truth. She is okay. She is not unhappy but she is not happy either. It becomes easy to smile, after a while. Easy to play a part, easy to tell herself that she is fine and that she will keep being fine, no matter what.

But people say that in each strong mage, there is a little child hiding, terrified from its own power and Ur agrees with those people because she cannot think of a time when she has not been afraid of her own powers or what they can do.

But she cannot let her old fears paralyse her and so she denies their existence to the world and especially, to herself. She cannot be afraid, not of herself. She has to teach her students, has to show them the path that will lead them to true greatness – and not to the cheap copycat version of it she is rumoured to have reached.

The world spins around her and she watches her students grow, watches them as they become stronger with every passing day —— and she allows herself to dream of a world where she can be happy and not just content.

Fate makes her regret ever dreaming of such a world because it crushes all her feeble dreams within mere hours.

She knows that she has little to no other options when she arrives in Brago, not with the state her magic is in, not with the fear in her heart – the fear for her students, not of herself, for a change – but she has never been scared of the end because it will happen to everyone, eventually, and if her path ends a little earlier than it is fate.

(And it means that she can get to see her daughter again earlier and that she can tell Ultear that she is so, so sorry for not being able to save her.)

He does not understand that she is really, completely gone because there is no way. She is said to be the strongest – this is why she has been his goal, why she has been the only person he has ever wanted to be measured against. Especially since he has hoped that he would have surpassed her by then.

And then, she has had the audacity of dying.  
Of leaving him behind before he has had the chance to catch up, of   _ **q u i t t i n g**_  before the competition has even started.

And the reason why she has died is that this goddamn fool called Gray has had to run off and nearly get himself killed, forcing her to make a decision, one between her life and the brat’s. It is this idiot’s fault that she is dead and that he is all alone, again.

Gray’s and no one else’s.

But so the little boy stares at the large cube of ice and presses his open hands against it, desperately hoping to feel some trace of life within the ice, for some trace of the woman who has been home to him, who has been a mother figure to him.

And he has deserved her care and her attention because he has never gotten her killed. He has always been the better student and now, the other one is the blame for the hole in his heart, a hole that has been there for a while, one that she used to fill up a little although she has never been able to replace his real mother.

(The reason why he first starts looking into ways to reverse Iced Shell is because he wants her back.)

(She has been warmth amidst the ice and it is cold without her.)


	3. god I just want to lay down (these colours make my eyes hurt) ;; jura & sherry

> _**god I just want to lay down (these colours make my eyes hurt)** _
> 
> _**Characters** _ _: Jura Neekis, Sherry Blendy_
> 
> _**Summary** _ _: At some point, they have to talk about all of this. But not now, not today._
> 
> _**AN:** _ _So I re-read some chapters of the Grand Magic Games Arc and I noticed the rather blatant absence of Sherry during the chapter where nearly everyone – including her fiancé – are at the pool. So here is my take on where she was._

Crocus’ streets were sunny and the citizens respectfully made way for the large man who was moving through the streets, accompanied by a young woman with hair as pink as his was lacking. A few years ago, the people of Crocus would have stared and wondered who they were but by now, the both mages had gained a certain fame and so they were regarded with a mixture of respect and admiration.

“…you could have gone to the pool with everyone else,” the woman said with a huff, crossing her arms and looking away from him.

“And left you alone with the master at the inn?” the man asked as he turned to look at her, a fond – although nearly invisible – smile on his face. “I don’t believe in cruelty like this.”

Her eyes narrowed as she sped up her pace a little, walking by his side. “I’m not some charity cause, Jura,” she said and beneath the harshness of her voice and the grim expression in her eyes, there was the slight quiver of her lower lip – evidence of the hurt she tried to cover up under pretended anger.

“I know,” he said, entirely ignoring her anger because he knew that this was not real, that this was the same bitterness that had made him fear for her soul once speaking again. For a woman who was so focused on love and the good in others, her greatest flaw was somewhat fitting; that her own emotions were the one thing she had no control whatsoever about. “But allow good old me to buy you ice cream, just in the good old days.”

In the days when she had been genuinely happy, in the days when the worst thing that had ever happened to her had been the time Yuuka’s bubblegum had been stuck in her hair. The time had been easier, it had been when heartbreak had been nothing but a word, an idea to her. He had preferred this, she should not have to know this well what it felt like to be heartbroken.

He did not like it that he was a wizard saint, supposedly one of the strongest mages in the entire country and yet, he could not carry her burden, could not wipe the frown off her face. She had been a part of the group he considered to be his family for such a long time, she was his little sister in everything but in blood and he hated it when she as unhappy.

(And no matter how much she tried to deny it, she was not happy these days.)

“Ice cream,” she said, her voice a bit too flat, a bit too empty. This was not her, she was meant to be fierce, a fire of emotions and the source of fear to everyone who did not share her easy access to emotions because she made them face what they were trying to keep hidden.

“Ice cream,” he said as he wondered how she was really feeling. He doubted that she was truly okay with the fact that she was the only one who was missing out on the fun by the pool. Not that she had had much choice in the matter, water made her uncomfortable and while she made exceptions for the trips the guild made to the lake – “I can do other things, there, you know?” – he had put down his foot when she had considered going there. She had never done things just because everyone else was doing them and he was highly against the idea of her starting this kind of thing now.

“We haven’t done that in a while,” she said and the layer of hurt and faked cheerfulness came apart, showed first cracks. “You’re buying, yes?”

“When haven’t I?” he replied as he offered her his arm (and his shoulder to cry on, still unable to shake off the feeling that soon, she would need this).

“I bought you ice cream when you were promoted to S-class!” she said as she dragged him along, her steps light and nearly bouncy.

“That was an awfully long time ago,” he said as he followed her, hoping that nothing would happen that would crush her spirit.

(At the same time, he felt like she needed to be crushed before she would raise from the ruins of herself again.)

 


	4. i never made promises lightly ;; layla

> **_i never made promises lightly_ **
> 
> _**Character:**  Layla Heartfilia_
> 
> _**Summary:**  She wishes her friend was a little more like her._

Ur makes promises too easily, far too easily, and sometimes, Layla wants to grab her friend’s shoulder and to ask Ur  _how on earth_  she intends to keep them all but then, she knows. Ur keeps her promises, always, because she has little hesitation to rip herself apart over something she had promised. It is perhaps her scariest ability, scarier than the way she can make ice bloom, the way no one looks the same way at a flower ever again after having faced Ur in combat.

Someone has said, once, that Layla’s magic was the one befitting for a lady but the celestial spirit mage wondered far too often whether it is really this easily.

Because Ur is not really a tomboy. The ice mage is perhaps not feminine in a traditional way but this is because Ur is too much of a fighter, too adamant to be free to be seen as conventional. But Layla knows that her best friend is hell in high heels, that Ur is a fearsome opponent and a reliable ally.

Layla is a mage who acknowledges the value of a promise and to her, it is both admirable and terrifying how easily a pledge comes to her friend. Even if she wanted, the blonde would never be able to be like this, she would never make a promise without thinking this much and she fears for her friend because soon enough, Ur would no longer be able to keep her word.

Ur has a good understanding for the importance of an oath, too, but hers is different, forged by something else. Ur does not need to make deals to be able to use her magic. She is, in a way, the one with the greatest freedom.

(But also the one with the heaviest burden.)

But perhaps this is why it is so utterly tempting to rely on Ur’s promises. It is easy to believe her because she does not break them. She breaks herself but her promises are always fulfilled. 

(Until she dies.)

(She has promised to stay alive.)

(First and last broken promise.)

(The irony is remarkable.)


	5. this ice-cream-covered screaming hyperactive thought ;; sherryon

> **_this ice-cream-covered screaming hyperactive thought_ **
> 
> **_Characters_ ** _: Lyon Vastia & Sherry Blendy_
> 
> **_Summary_ ** _: Maybe this day could still be saved._
> 
> **_Prompt_ ** _: two miserable people meeting at a wedding AU_
> 
>  

It was not that she envied her old friend for her happiness, not at all. Sherry was not the kind of woman who was spiteful (or petty) enough for jealousy, for unfounded envy. She was a grownup woman, she was mature enough to smile and be polite throughout the event, gently dismissing the pointless remarks on the dress she had not chosen or her career. She was not here to cause a scene, she was here because she had been invited and because she liked weddings, a lot.

“Bride or groom?”

She turned her head. It was, of course, the most cliché question anyone could ask on a wedding but she had not been asked it so far and so she smiled at the young man who had approached her. He looked – aside from handsome – about as uncomfortable as she did so maybe, she had found someone who would not mind sitting down by the bar and drinking a few drinks in comfortable silence rather than to socialise.

“Bride … I guess,” she said as she twirled her glass between her fingers, adding the explanation. “We lost contact a while ago, I was surprised when the invitation found me.”

She had told this story far too many times today because she knew literally no one in this room and all she wanted was to get a break until the time was right to leave without seeming impolite. Representation was an important part of her job and she just could not afford getting the stigma of being rude, anywhere.

“So you don’t know any of those people, either,” the man said as he ran a hand through his messy white hair. “Dammit, I had hoped someone could tell me who I got to stay away from unless I want to talk about work.”

She smiled, finally someone in this room who had some sense of humour inside of him. “Steer clear of the groom’s distanced aunts and you should be good,” she said as she mentioned over to the quartet of women dressed in periwinkle dresses. “Aside from work, they’ll ask about own intentions to marry.”

He laughed as he snatched two glasses from the tray, handing one to her. “You make good observations, miss,” he said as he clinked his glass against hers. “—and it seems that my manners abandoned me … the name’s Lyon Vastia. I technically am one the groom’s side but … we haven’t talked in years.”

“Does this make you the groom’s estranged brother the bridesmaids have been gossiping about?” she asked as she smirked against the wine. She had done her homework, after all. She knew that this sort of social gathering was more of a pool filled with sharks than a meeting at work and it usually paid out to know who to stay away from and so she had listened to the gossip, hoping to gather enough knowledge that she would make it through the night.

“Kinda, yes,” he said as he grimaced. “We aren’t related by blood but we had the same foster mother … who is the woman who is currently trying to rip off his ear, in case you wondered.”

She looked over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow as she looked at the pretty woman who was – no matter how short – certainly one of the more impressive people she had seen at this wedding. “…not the kind of person I’d want to cross,” she said as she smiled.

“And you haven’t even talked to her,” he said as he threw up his free hand dramatically. “Ur is … pretty special. And she’ll have my head once she realises that I am back in town.“

She smiled. He was amusing in a way that was not embarrassing – it was rather unattractive when someone made a fool out of himself, in her opinion – but even this could not cover up that he was about as interested in this wedding as she was. She was happy for her old friend, certainly, because she deserved all of this but Sherry felt out of place.

Clearing her throat, she held out her free hand. “The name is Sherry Blendy,” she said as she wondered when it had become difficult to think of the proper way to introduce herself. “It’s nice to make your acquaintance.“

She had to give him credit for not laughing at her although it would have been well justified, in her own opinion because she did sound ridiculous. She was usually better with social situations, some had even said that she had a natural gift for dealing with others.

He merely smiled as he shook her hand before he mentioned towards an abandoned table. “Not that I am an expert but … people say that those shoes kill the feet,” he said and she had to admit, it was kind of cute. Well, not really. He was too old to be cute. But if she was still in high school, she would thought him to be the biggest cutie around, there was no doubt.

But she was no longer a starry-eyed high school girl who dreamed of a greater and better world. She was a woman who had seen the world and what she had seen had not been what she had dreamed of. She had wanted a little too much and she had gotten nothing off it. Looking back, it had been better for her as a person. She had no idea who she would have become if she had gotten what she had wanted but she was positive that she would not have liked this person, not on the long run.

She had come back from what should have been her glorious trip to conquer the world as a hardened woman, as someone who viewed the world in a more realistic manner.

And now, this man – this Lyon Vastia – had the nerve to be the rain on her parade. He could not know, of course. He could impossibly know what was going on in her head, he could not know that she had come – only months ago – to the conclusion that she was through with men for the rest of the century because they were all stupid pricks. Lyon Vastia was the least stupid-prick-y person she had met in a while and so he was really overthrowing her mindset.

“They do,” she said as she followed him to the table, surrendering to her fate – and the perfectly crazy thought that maybe, she should give all of this another chance and do what, according to the movies, lonely and miserable people did when they attended a wedding: getting a date with someone as miserable as them.

(And he was certainly a candidate.)


	6. and you know i love you, yeah ;; silvur

 

> **_and you know i love you, yeah_ **
> 
> **Characters** : Silver Fullbuster & Ur
> 
> **Summary** : Here we go away, I kinda wanna be more than friends.

Ur Frost had been convinced that it was over.

She had been through four years of hell but then she had finished school and moved away from home – just like her friends – and they had all agreed to never talk about the past again. Because the past had sucked, majorly. There had been far too many evenings of marching through the woods, searching for dead bodies. But then, what had she been expecting when she had gotten all tangled up in the supernatural business.

She sighed deeply before she coughed when she accidentally inhaled the cigarette smoke of the man who was standing next to her in front of the club. Allowing her eyes to close, she strained her ears until she picked up a familiar voice and then, she rolled her eyes because he was, of course, flirting. _“Wow, princess, can I have your number? I must’ve forgotten mine the moment I saw your face,”_ he said and a part of her wondered when he would realise that no one liked pick-up lines.

Checking her wristwatch, she sighed again before she snapped her fingers and turned to look at the man who had been staring at her for the past two minutes since she had arrived. “Look, not sure what you’re looking for, mister, but I’m not interested,” she said drily as she adjusted her coat’s collar with a thin smile. “So you better move along.”

For a moment, her smile turned nearly genuine as her ears that were now tuned in and could easily make out her target’s voice even beneath the deafening music which was why she could tell that he now knew that she was here, his statement of _“what the fuck happened to my drink?”_ proved that. She smirked as she heard him curse under his breath and decided that this was so much better than having to step into a club.

She really hated clubs and each day she had not to walk into one was a _very good_ day in her book. Then, her absolute dislike for this kind of establishment might be connected to the first and last time she had gone into one for a night of fun, laughter and drinks with her friends. It had been a night that had ended when someone had ended up dead.

“A girl as pretty as you shouldn’t be here,” the man replied and she briefly mused about how rich she would be by now if she had gotten a few jewels for each time she had heard these words or something along the same lines – probably rich enough to afford some kind of assistant who could do the lurking in dark alleys for her.

“I can handle myself just fine,” she replied as she straightened her spine as she glared at him. Truth be told, after the things she had been through along the years, she would have preferred being mugged over what was going to happen sooner or later.

“Do my tired eyes deceive me?” the husky voice of her once upon a time friend asked as he stepped out of the shadows, his steps nearly bouncy as he approached her. “The one and only Ur Frost, a long way from home,” he continued as he poked her cheek.

“And you wonder why I didn’t call,” she replied as she leaned against the wall, her arms crossed and her mood already growing slightly less happy but then, this was normal for her when she had to deal with his irresponsible demeanour and his bad choices.

“Well, you should’ve called instead of coming to this part of town – it’s not really safe for someone as tiny and pretty as you,” he replied as he looked around as if he was searching for someone who was obviously not around which made her sigh inwardly.

“Gil’s on his honeymoon and Ivan is busy,” she explained as she pursed her lips. “It’s just me.”

“Do I have to tell you how stupid it is of you to come here alone?” he asked and she reached up, flicking his forehead before she pushed herself of the wall and started to walk down the street, not even looking over her shoulder to make sure if he followed. He always did.

“You do remember that I don’t require protection, yes?” she asked as she turned a corner, approaching the car she had rented earlier the day when she had arrived in town.

“Which makes it rather interesting that you’ve showed up,” he replied as he raised an eyebrow. “And yes, I do forgive you for ruining my night out in town, almighty highness.”

“I’m not quite that good,” she shrugged as she unlocked her car. “How did you like your drink?”

“For the future, dollface, don’t mess with my alcohol,” he said darkly as he sat down on the passenger seat before he started to frown at her. “What’s the matter, anyway?”

“And here I was wondering when you’d start asking about the cloak and dagger business,” she replied as she started the engine and steered the car out into the dark street.

“Maybe I just trust you enough to think that you won't knock me out and harvest my organs before dumping my body in a dark alley,” he said and she grimaced because although this was certainly meant to be a joke, it hit a little too close to home for her to laugh about it.

“Maybe I did go and started to work as a cop,” she replied as she stared at the silent street in front of them. It had been three years since graduation and she had not talked to him in two years and nine months because they had reached the point where everything they had said had somehow hurt the other. And so she had stopped and had gone away to figure out who she was without a crowd of friends who followed her around, without Gildarts who had provided the physical strength during her operations, without Ivan who had always figured out the riddles she had not managed to crack – without anyone who had ever stood by her side.

The last years had been a terrifying experience for her because she had never known who she really was and all in all, she was not sure if she would make the decision to find out who she really was ever again if this was the way it felt: lonely most of the time.

“Then the law enforcement certainly gained one of the brightest minds I’ve ever known,” he replied as he raised both eyebrows, this time. “You haven’t come to arrest me, have you? ‘cause I haven’t committed any crimes since the good old days.”

She remembered the days when they had all done things that had not been legal at all but she would hardly go far enough to call the time the ‘good old days’ because not a single one among them had managed to walk away without a scratch or nine.

“You think it was a game,” she hissed as her fist clenched around the badge in her coat’s pocket. “You always thought that way, right? But you  know, I think differently.”

Because she still dreamed of the bodies they had found over the years, because she still felt like she was going to be sick whenever she remembered that they had never managed to catch (or stop) the one who had nearly killed Cornelia and Layla. Everyone else pretended like it had never happened, like their youth had been as normal as it could be for someone who could destroy walls by just touching them and someone who kept spacing out and having terrifyingly accurate visions of the future – but Ur could not do this, she could not pretend like all of this had never been part of her life.

“I didn’t think it was a game but not taking it too serious was one to cope with the way bodies kept showing up right and left,” he replied as he tapped his fingers against the dashboard.

“We saw people die in the most gruesome ways,” she said as she shook her head.

“Which should’ve fucked up our heads a lot more than it did,” he said in agreement before he scratched his neck and sighed deeply. “Personally, I found the torture thing _very_ scarring.”

She rolled her eyes as she parked her car in a darkened parking lot and leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “Which time do you mean?” she asked as she frowned deeply.

“The time our most favourite psycho got his hands on Cornelia and you,” he said as he gritted his teeth and she sighed, once again, as she remembered. The event had left scars on her because she had been the one who had gotten to feel the physical aspect of the torture while the both others had been the ones to have to cope with the emotional dimension.

(She was nearly sure that she had gotten lucky, the leg she had lost had grown back before the night had been over but neither Silver nor Cornelia had ever been the same again.)

“Yeah,” she said as she massaged her knuckles, “that was a pretty rough night for all of us.”

“Nearly thought you’d die,” he admitted and she reached over to flick his forehead because he should have known better, should have remembered that she was too good to die in a dirty cellar, slowly bleeding out. “Corn actually predicted someone would die that night.”

“Wasn’t the first time I cheated death, won’t be the last,” she said as she looked at her fingertips and focused on the literal ice in her veins before she brought up her hand against the windshield and drew a neat line. “Though, to be honest, growing limbs back is _horribly_ tiring.”

“Oh, I know,” he said as he grimaced, “but lemme guess, you didn’t come to chat with me.”

“Our favourite psychopath is out for blood again,” she said as she pushed back the memories that dwelled up inside her head. It was not quite that easy; she had never managed to forget the night when they had nearly lost Gildarts forever. Deliora was their biggest enemy and she would prefer for him to be neutralised. But she did not know how to stop him alone – it had taken three of them (Ivan, Silver and Ur herself) to get the demon to stop his attempts on brutally slaughtering Gildarts the last time.

“So that’s why you are here,” he said after a moment and suddenly, she became all too aware of the silence around them. “You want to finish what we’ve started years ago.”

“You make it sound like we ever had a choice,” she said as she kept herself from thinking about the way it had really been, the way their hand had been forced – how their only alternatives had been death or joining the murderous demon that had had it out for them.

“Well, we could’ve curled up in a corner and let him kill us all,” he said and a part of her wanted to remind him that death had never been an option before she remembered that he had taken the entire Deliora business especially hard because Silver was, by nature, a demon as well – only that his element was ice and not fire and he had told himself over and over again that this made a difference, that he was not like the man who tortured teenagers for the fun of it.

“That would’ve been such an amazing idea,” she said sarcastically. “Why didn’t we do it?”

For a moment, he was silent, nearly as if he was considering her offer to help her and whether or not it would be worth it but then, he sighed deeply. “To hell with it,” he grumbled as he nodded. “It’s not like I got anything better to do. However,” he added, “you owe me a drink.”

“You’ll get your drink,” she promised as her lips curled upwards. “I might even made dinner.”

He snorted and for a moment, she felt the odd fluttering sensation in her stomach she had last experienced when they had gone to prom together. “You drive a hard bargain, no surprise that Dreyar kept going back to working with you,” he said as he ran a hand through his hair. “But, you know, I feel like I’ll need sleep.”

She nodded as she checked her wristwatch, again. “I feel like we both will need all our regenerative powers soon,” she said as she yawned. “So make sure you’re fully charged.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to use me as bait or something,” he said as he rested his head against the window. “That’d be extraordinarily rude of you, ice princess.”

The old nickname made her scoff and then, she crossed her arms. “If I owe you a drink,” she said as she smirked at him, “you owe me coffee … buy some for me tomorrow morning?”

“Don’t tell me you still need coffee to get your brain to work properly in the mornings,” he said as he flicked her forehead carefully. “That’s kinda sad by now.”

She gently swatted away his hand and brushed back a strand of her hair. “If we go back to the old times, you’ll be the muscle and I’ll be the brain just like you’re undoubtedly going to eat tons of steak the moment you get anywhere close to it to sustain your body, I have to make sure that my brain is kept fully charged,” she replied as she looked out into the darkness because the memories were heavy on her shoulders. They had never been a team with a way of working together that had been as well-oiled as everything Gildarts and Cornelia had done since the day their paths had crossed but they had been successful nonetheless because they had been fearless to challenge one another.

“Whatever you say, ice princess,” he said as he opened the car door and looked away from her. “So do you tell me where you’re staying or do I have to track you down tomorrow?”

“You mean later today,” she corrected as she brushed back her bangs and smirked slightly.

“You know what I mean,” he huffed as he rested his hands atop of the car and leaned back into the interior, his eyes gleaming darkly. “I mean, I like to play games just as much as you do but…”

“I don’t think our idea of what a game is has been even close in the past few years,” she replied as she scribbled down her hotel’s address on a scrap of paper and handed it over.

“Fancy, fancy, the Palais,” he said as he raised both both eyebrows at her. “Does daddy know that you use his credit cards, Ur?”

“You ask the wrong questions,” she replied as her hand hovered about the key. “Would he care?”

They both knew the answer to this question. No, her father would not care about her using his money to get her hands on a room in the most expensive hotel around. If anything, he would even be happy about it because he was running for some important political position and it had been a thorn in his side that she had done nothing to openly support this decision so far or to even pretend that she was made of whatever first daughters or mayor’s sons or whatever were made of.

“Good night, Silver,” she said as she kept looking straight ahead.

“Sleep well, ice princess,” he replied and she was nearly tempted to ask him about the nickname and why he had gone back to using it after no one had in such a long time but then, the door was closed and his presence slowly faded away which was, in a way, calming.

She rolled her eyes as she listened to his fading steps and then, she had to grin because nearly three years after the last time they had been a team, they would work together again and this meant that she would get back the one who had understood her powers nearly as well as she had understood them because they were so similar – and she would have a partner again who knew when to step back and let her handle everything on her own because she was ready to slay something.

(And he still made the best cocktails.)

But all in all, she was in no real mood to keep thinking about the inevitable and so she sighed deeply as she started the engine and hit the roads again.

Compared to tracking Silver Fullbuster in a city she hardly knew, she made it back to her hotel room with absolute ease but the moment she stepped into the dark room, her enhanced senses picked up on another presence and although yes, it did feel very similar, her first instinct was to charge before she could be attacked – years of getting into trouble _had_ left an imprint on her intuition.

But her fist was caught in midair and then, her wrist was twisted in a way that made her wince because she had never liked it when someone managed to predict her first move and catch her – not that this had happened all that often. When it did happen, it meant that she found herself with the back to the proverbial wall within moments because she then had hardly a choice but to rely on her superior strength and perhaps even the ice in her veins.

“Easy, easy,” Silver’s voice rang out and she remembered why she had been nearly happy in the nearly three years in which they had not met: the amount of surprise visits had gone down drastically because with him out of her life, no one had had the guts to randomly show up in her home without being invited there. But then, she should have figured that the moment she contacted him, he would go back to being absolutely incorrigible.

“One day, I’ll accidentally kill you because you do this to me,” she replied as she suddenly was grateful for the darkness around them because this way, there was no chance that he would have seen what he had been trying to get a view on since he had figured out that she was about as human as he was: her true form, the form she kept a secret from everyone.

“And then, you’ll realise that you’ve accidentally slain your dearest friend and you’ll do this _crying over a dead man’s body_ thing – I’m nearly looking forward to it,” he replied as he let go of her wrist and took a few steps back from her before he switched on the light that nearly blinded her for a moment after she had just gotten used to the darkness.

“You got _issues_ , Silver,” she said exasperatedly as she dropped her bag and her coat on the couch and crossed the room before she opened the mini bar. “So, what do you want now again?”

“First of all, it’s always delightful to be in your company,” he started and she wondered how he could say something like this without having to laugh because while she was many things, she was certainly no delight to be around, not with the way death and destruction followed her. “Secondly, why wait with the drink when you can book it all on your father’s credit card and thirdly – I owe you a kiss.”

For a moment, Ur was completely speechless and this in itself was already an accomplishment because she was, by default, unfazed. Gildarts had once said that the day something would manage to catch her off guard, the day she would not be able to maintain her chronically unimpressed demeanour would likely coincidence with the day they all died.

“What on earth has possessed you to think that you owe me a kiss?” she asked as she regained her composure, her brain searching frantically for an event along the past seven years in which something had occurred that would make kissing a reasonable thing to do. But there was nothing that made it sound like it was wise.

“You know it’s funny how you said _‘possessed you’_ since I’m a demon which means that I’m not just immune to being possessed but also more likely to be the guy who possesses others,” he said and she faintly remembered a time when she had asked far too many and highly invasive questions about his kind because she had been just so very curious to learn more.

“You know exactly what I mean and you know that I’m not patient enough to put up with your nonsense right now,” she said darkly as she opened the bottle of gin and poured it into a glass before she handed him a beer and hoped that he would just let it go.

“Remember prom?” he asked and slowly, something inside of her brain resurfaced. There had been a moment, sure, but then, Cornelia had screamed because she had stumbled over yet another dead body which had, logically, ruined the moment.

They had never addressed it again and then, they had graduated and she had made a point out of getting away from the mess that had been their life for such a long time because, really, if she had stayed, she would have died or gone crazy because it had been such a huge mess with all the things that had kept happening. Since then, nearly three years had passed and they were no longer the teenagers who had stumbled across corpses, who had gotten all tangled up in the supernatural business before they had been ready to face the darker side of their own existence.

Sometimes, when she thought back, she felt like they had sacrificed their youth the day they had first realised that they could not take certain things to the police because they would get called crazy – this had been why she had become a police officer, she had wanted to be someone who could take care of the supernatural business while enforcing the law.

“You mean, the day when Georgia was killed,” she said as she pressed her lips into a tight line. She would never manage to separate the both events or all the things that had happened afterwards because this had been the time when she had first realised that no matter how many dark beings they somehow got rid of, they would never be able to save everyone. It had been the day when she had realised that they would always be inadequate.

“That’s one way to look at it,” he said as he stared at the bottle in his hands with a thoughtful expression on his face. “I preferred to remember it as the day Clive punched me into the face.”

She sighed loudly. Actually, it was no surprise. Along the years of working together, Gildarts and Silver had punched each other quite a few times – it had gotten to the point in the end where Cornelia had ran a betting pool which had been quite lucrative for everyone who had been neither Silver nor Gildarts because they had been banned from betting on their own fights.

“Why doesn’t this surprise me?” she asked as she conjured a handful of ice cubes for her drink and shook her head. “You two were really idiots when we were younger.”

“I actually don’t think we ever stopped being idiots,” Silver admitted as he crossed his arms behind his head and sat down on the couch, his jacket crumpled as he shook of his shoes.

“I was trying to be optimistic,” she replied as she sat down on the chair and freed herself from her shoes with a deeply sigh. “You were explaining something.”

“Ah yes, good point,” he said as he rolled his eyes at her before he grew more serious. “…remember what I said when I asked you whether we’d go to prom together?”

“How could I forget the great Silver Fullbuster speech of how we would go as friends,” she replied as she tried not to think about how offended she had been because it had been irrational.

It had been a completely rational thing for them to go together. Their prom had fallen into a time when people had been dying all over the town and it had taken them a while to figure out what had been killing them and to go together had been for their own safety and for the safety of everyone else in their school because as Gildarts had said ever so fittingly _“you guys don’t distract each other”_ which had caused her to roll her eyes because sometimes, she had been a little distracted but never to the point that she would have messed up big time.

“So you were offended,” he replied and there was a underlying chuckle in his voice that did not make her happy because, hell, this was not what she deserved. It had not been her fault that she had been kind of crushing on him. He had been the only other ice elemental being around and so she had felt a connection.

“Not more than you were when I cancelled on you to date your _best friend ever_ ,” she replied as she rested her feet atop of the little table and smirked back at him, the memory still vivid to her because it had been rather hilarious in her opinion to see him rage.

“He was annoying and you dating him interfered with our schedule of chasing bad guys so yeah, I didn’t like it,” he replied as he finally opened the beer she had handed him.

“Keep telling yourself that,” she replied as she took a sup of her own drink. “Anyway, what I was going to ask you, anyway, why did you insist on us saying we went as not-friends?”

He coughed and nearly spat out his beer as he spluttered. “That was Clive’s idea, was supposed to keep people from asking,” he said as he regained his momentum and smirked. “Apparently, ninety percent of our fellow students thought we’d make out in the broom closet anyway.”

“Such a shame that I got the reputation but no kisses,” she replied as she decided to just go with the flow for a change, seeing how far she would drag him out of his comfort zone which was to drop smooth lines like there was no tomorrow without ever acting upon them.

“If you want kisses, all you got to do is say so,” he replied as he wiggled his eyebrows at her. “I might know a guy, you know, who’d like to kiss you, ice princess.”

“Is that so?” she asked as she got up and walked over to him, leaning into his personal space.

“He’s quite the good-looking guy, you know,” he continued and if she had not been quite this interested in kissing him, she would have thrown him out of the window but of course it was Silver Fullbuster who always took the time to boost his own ego to new heights.

“So he got the Silver stamp of approval?” she asked as she let her lips curl up into a grin because this was a game she could play and she saw no harm in doing so. Truth be told, they had been walking in circles around this topic for at least four years now and she was getting rather sick and tired of this – and her patience had never been her strong suit.

“Oh, _absolutely_ yes,” he replied as he rested his hand on her shoulder. “I highly recommend that guy, you know.”

“Mhm-mhm,” she muttered as she kept looking straight at him. “And how are the chances that he only wants to kiss me to finally figure out my species? Can’t have that, you know.”

“I think he’s pretty convinced that you are a snow queen,” he replied as he pulled her in and whatever witty comment had been resting on her tongue, waiting to be used was wiped away from her mind as her one-track brain decided to focus on the kissing rather than on their banter.

She did not care much about how Silver had worked out what she was when she had been trying to keep it a secret – they were of the same kind and he was smarter than he and everyone else gave him credit for so it was not that much of a surprise – but this did not stop her from deciding that if he told Gildarts or anyone else, she would make him regret it.

But even this decision was only of secondary importance, she concluded as she twirled a strand of her hair around his finger as she kissed him back. Right now, they were fixing what they had messed up during prom – aside from the part where they had allowed someone to get killed and this was far more important in her opinion right now.

Making a battle plan on how to dispose of Deliora once for all would come later, too.


	7. i'll follow you (follow you home) ;; sherryon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just because we are both not quite honest does not mean our love is not real. ;; **push au**

She had been a Pusher all her life and most of the time, to Sherry Blendy, life was ridiculously easy. Of course, she had to avoid being seen by the Division and this meant that she kept moving around but as long as she kept her head down, there was not much they could do to her – because those who came to collect her frequently went home and had forgotten what they had originally planned on doing. After all, Sherry Blendy – better known as Viper in most of the official documents – was one of the best Pushers in the world and in the past years, she had learned how to influence someone in a subtle way, ensuring that her victims did not remember that she had been toying around with their minds.

And in all honesty, she was not supposed to be anywhere close to the city of sin, not when she could easily sway the minds of people and take their money from them but, as usual, when a friend got into trouble with the Division, there was little else she could actually do aside from joining the absolutely moronic plan of making some quick money before ditching town.

“…and you’re certain that the Division cannot track us here?” Yukino Aguria, Stitches and nearly infamous for her tendency to worry about everything far more than necessary, asked as she pulled down the hem of her rather short white dress.

“You insult Cheney’s abilities,” Sherry replied as she flicked back a strand of pink hair and looked over her shoulder for a moment to smirk at the black-haired man who was, as far as she was concerned, likely the best Shadow in the world as he even managed to conceal himself from Watchers.

“Am I the only one who thinks that this is a absolutely horrible idea?” Lyon Vastia asked as he scratched his neck, causing Sherry to sigh as she reached over and patted his shoulder. For the past three years, they had been working together. He was a Mover and for a stunt like the one they were going to pull, someone of his talents was required.

“Well, it was Sting’s plan so maybe, we are dealing with something risky here,” Rogue said quietly as he approached them slowly, the glass of whiskey in his hands.

“We assembled the best of the best,” Sherry said as she reached over to snatch the olive out of Lyon’s glass before chewing it carefully. “Today’s a night to have fun.”

“And to make enough cash to get Rogue’s lady out of the country,” Sting said drily as he got up and smoothed out his jacket before he offered his arm to Yukino. “Well then, let’s take the floor.”

Sherry sighed deeply as she adjusted the strap of her dress and then, she looked at her fellow conspirators. “The moment we see anyone suspicious looking, we abandon the whole thing,” she said as she reached for Lyon’s arm. “I don‘t want to get into trouble for this.”

Not that she would ever _stay_ in trouble. There was no way to be entirely immune to a Pusher’s ability and even when the Division had someone to match her skill, she would not succumb to their mind-control easily, she would fight for her head. And frankly, with the exception of that Nirvana asshole, she had never met someone who could counter her.

(But they did not talk about what had happened with Nirvana, anyway.)

“Suppose we should go get going then,” Lyon said as he wrapped one arm around her shoulders and gently led her out of the hotel bar where they had met up and to the next casino.

God, it was easy to slip into the mind of the people at the entrance who had the job of keeping people who had no money out of the casinos but the duo of Bleeders was not quite as powerful as they believed themselves to be and before they had even noticed that someone was messing with their brain, she had already managed to get her whole crew into the building.

It was nearly funny, Sherry mused as she leaned against Lyon, her chin atop of his head and gave him cover as he _moved_ the little ball jumping on the roulette wheel ever so slightly, granting Rogue a handsome amount of prize money. Of course, the way they cheated was advanced and well-planned. It was a beginner’s mistake to claim victory for oneself. And they were no longer amateurs. If Sherry had an actual criminal record – and would not be quite as careful when it came to erasing her traces every once in a while – she would have to serve time in prison for _years_. And she did not have the time to waste away in prison, there was quite a bit in this world she had not seen so far and this had to change.

“Not going to play, Blendy?” Sting muttered as he rested one hand on her shoulder, his fingertips too close to where her tattoo had once been for her comfort.

“I don’t need any money so far and frankly, one of us should be on lookout,” she replied as she wrapped her fingers around Lyon’s collar before she drew circles onto his temples. She knew that this sort of thing strained him and that he would need to take a break sooner or later and a part of her started to plan how to get him to see that she was right about this, fully aware of his stubbornness.

“No worries, I got all eyes open,” Sting replied as he mentioned towards Lyon, worry briefly crossing his face as he pressed his lips into a thin line. “Get him a drink, really,” he muttered under his breath as his fingertips ghosted over the scar on her shoulder. “He’s running out.”

She needed no Watcher to tell her when her partner was pushing himself too far and she was certain that Sting knew this too, that she did not need him to tell her this because it was something she had been thinking about already. _Pushing_ people did not take quite as much from her as _moving_ took from Lyon and in spite of this fundamental difference, she had learned quite a bit about mental exhaustion lately because she was the one who made sure that Lyon slept enough, even if it sometimes forced her to _push_ him into the right direction which was something she did not like to do.

“I know,” she replied as she looked over her shoulder and spotted Yukino by the automats, her face a mask of determination as she played, her lips pressed together. Sighing, Sherry bent down to press her lips against Lyon’s ear for a moment, whispering a short excuse before she dragged Sting to the bar. “I don’t wanna be a joykill, Eucliffe, but I don’t want to stay here for longer than necessary,” she said drily as she leaned against the next pillar, her eyes still trained on Lyon.

“You love your Mover,” Sting said after a moment, surprise in his voice. Actually, this did not surprise Sherry because she had come to terms with this truth a long time ago. Yes, she did have feelings for her partner. No, she was not going to act upon them unless she could be sure that their partnership would survive it. She was a hardened woman, she could do this.

“And here I was thinking I’d have to spell it out for you,” she replied as she threw back her head and scanned the room before she halted as she spotted two familiar faces. She had been staying away from the Division’s sight but this did not mean that she would not recognise two of the best and probably most dangerous agents of the Division when they were sitting at the high rollers table, sharing a bottle of champagne and having a very good time.

“No worries, Viper,” Sting said calming, having followed her gaze, while his body shook from suppressed laughter. “The best Wiper the Division ever got their hands on didn’t like the idea of being _pushed_ into _wiping_ his partner,” he said as he lifted the glass up and toasted towards the both older people who were chatting while the chips piled up in front of them.

“So they are fugitives?” she asked as she followed his gaze to the Wiper and the Shifter who were probably cheating their way through the game which took commitment and so Sherry could respect that. Actually, a part wanted to ask the woman how she handled the mental exhaustion after manipulating many things in favour of her partner and her.

“They are and I’m certain that if the Division was here, they’d cash them in before even bothering with us,” Sting said drily as he pushed a small bowl filled with olives into her direction, his face an expression of worry. “You should get Vastia out of there, you know,” he added and if he had been anyone else, she would have replied with a snarky comment, trying to get him away from her because she was not willed to openly admit how she felt already.

“You’re right,” she muttered as she downed her drink and ate the last few olives before she approached her partner and wrapped her arms around his shoulders before she bent down her head and rested her forehead against his temple. “Hey,” she muttered as she inhaled deeply, trying to slow down her heart rate. “Would you mind to check out some of the other games with me?” she asked as she tapped her fingernails against his jacket. She knew that Lyon was taking this serious because not only did he like Rogue, he also was friends with the Shadow’s girlfriend who had quite a few issues with the Division and really needed money to ditch the country which had proven to be difficult after all her assets had been frozen by the Division.

“Yeah, I wanted to take a break from this,” he muttered back as he briefly nodded into Rogue’s general direction. “No one keeps playing while being so damn bad at this.”

“There’s no way to be actually good at gambling,” she replied drily, her finger curling around his collar and pulling him back, her lips forming a smile. On other occasions, she had _pushed_ him into resting – something she did not like to do, he was her partner and not her puppet, but something she had to do at times to make sure that he did not break his brain.

“You’re a damn good partner, Viper,” he muttered as he excused himself from the table and followed her, one arm wrapped loosely around her waist as they headed for the higher level where another bar was located, one that would allow them to keep their eyes on the others.

“I try my best,” she said, feeling rather self-conscious all of a sudden. They were a good team, nearly as good as other teams that had been hunted around the world for years. However, they were not in for the fame. Their goal was to find a place where they could finally settle down without having to watch their backs all the time. This was why they did usually avoid to get involved in bigger things – it was the safest way to keep the Division away.

“I’m quite certain that you are the best,” he replied and she was happy that years on the run had left her with a rather impressive poker face because otherwise, she would have been an open book for him for a moment (or three) and she did not want to risk that.

“We have been rather successful lately, right?” she asked as her eyes flickered over to Sting who had joined Yukino at the automats and was trying hard not to let it show that he was having some kind of vision by burying his head in her neck and for some reason, this made her sigh. Of course, she knew that Sting could not help himself. He was one of the better Watchers – although he was certainly outclassed by Cana Alberona – but whenever he came in contact with alcohol, visions came faster than usual and were much sharper than usually.

“That we were,” Lyon agreed as he stared at his own glass, a pensive expression on his face.

“So I was thinking that once we made sure that everyone gets out of here safely, we could go for a vacation,” she said as she bit her lips and scratched her neck, briefly wondering why she had brought this over herself. This was the closest she would ever get to asking him out on a date because while friends sometimes went on vacations together, they did not go on dates.

(A fact so easy that even her Stitches cousin would never be able to forget about it.)

For a moment, Lyon was silent and Sherry nearly hated herself for even thinking that this might have been a good idea but then, he cleared his throat and nodded. “…I heard Paris is nice around this time of the year,” he said slowly at he looked away from her. “And you always wanted to go there, right? So let’s do that once we saw off Minerva.”

She grinned into her hair before she brushed back some strands and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Paris sounds like an amazing plan,” she said as she pressed her thumb against his temple and massaged it gently. “And here I thought that if I ever wanted to go to Paris, I’d have to push someone into taking me,” she added drily before she realised that this was indeed a thought she had been thinking a long time ago.

Lyon chuckled awkwardly as he patted her shoulder gently. “Whenever you want to go somewhere – unless it’s completely out of question – you just have to say so,” he said as he rubbed his neck and looked away. “I mean, you went to Sweden with me. I owe you one.”

She rolled her eyes as she reached for her drink. “I went to Sweden with you because you asked me so nicely,” she said as she reached for his hand and squeezed it gently, searching the room for the people they had came with. Rogue was staring grimly at his glass, the chips he had won in the bag under his arm, while Yukino was trying to cheer him up a little. Meanwhile, Sting was standing next to them, on his best way to get drunk which would get them into major trouble.

“Do something about it,” Lyon muttered as he followed her gaze. “We can’t have him predicting the end of the world or something right here, that’ll only get us into trouble.”

She sighed deeply before she somehow managed to get Rogue to look at her. As he nodded slightly, she rolled her eyes. “Apparently, Rogue got enough money anyway,” she said as she momentarily went blind as her blue eyes turned entirely black as she slipped into Sting’s mind, convincing him to put down the glass and not to pick it up again, pushing the thought that it was time to wrap up everything and ditch the scene into his head.

“That’s why you don’t get caught, right?” Lyon muttered as her vision cleared again.

“Took me years of training,” she replied as she yawned and shook her head quickly, trying to shake off thoughts that were not hers, thoughts that clung to hers like glue. And yet, she was not the best Pusher in the world. She was one of the best – the skill to manipulate silently and on great distance was something that set her apart – but she would never be the best because even after all the years she had been training for this, she had never managed to _push_ someone by just touching them. And if she truly wanted to be the best, this was something she would have to learn first – and it was something she did not want to learn because that would make her too powerful for her own liking.

“Remind me to never get on your bad side,” Lyon said as he pulled her to her feet, his hand cold against her skin but she did not mind because she was used to it. Most Movers had the opposite problem, that their hearts beat too fast, but Lyon’s heartbeat had always been slow and steady which had caused his body temperature to be always low.

“I’d _always_ play nice when it comes to you,” she admitted as she followed him down the stairs and past the table where the both former Division agents were still focusing on their con, not even lifting their gaze as two other special humans walked past them although they had to know, Sherry was certain. No one stayed in the Division for years without learning how to pick up on someone else’s presence.

“That’s good to know,” he said as they reached the others, briefly nodding at them. “So?”

“We got the money, I got a headache and all in all, I think it’s time to ditch this place,” Sting said as he threw one arm around Yukino, his grin too wide and too dangerous as always.

“Are you alright?” Sherry asked nonetheless because before she had been working and travelling with Lyon fulltime, she had sometimes worked with Sting and although she had never worried quite as much as Yukino, she still preferred it when the chronically arrogant Watcher was not going out of his mind because he had had a vision he had not liked. Like the time when they had been in London and all Sting had seen was their deaths for days which had been an immensely difficult situation for both of them – especially since this future had not vanished until they had met Yukino, especially since they still had nearly died. She was not going to go back to London for at least another ten years – the place had left no good memories behind in her head.

“Don’t worry about me, Blendy, I’m just fine,” the blond man said with a smirk as he ruffled his own hair and adjusted his tie. “Well, you get us out of here and we’ll ditch town?”

She remembered that this had been part of the plan from the beginning, that this was why she had gotten involved in the first place. They needed to convince the people at the entrance that they had not won any money whatsoever and the only way to do this was by having a Pusher on the team. Well, and a Mover was needed for this part as well because aside from a telekinetic person, no one could move around the surveillance cameras in a way to permanently keep them away.

“Working on it,” she said as she caught the eye of the both Bleeders and sent them a dazzling smile as she slipped into their heads to make sure that they would forget them soon enough.

“Good job,” Rogue said quietly as they stepped back onto the street and for once, the stoic Shadow even cracked a smile. “I suppose that was it, yes?”

“Paris is calling, yes,” Sherry said with a nod as she yawned. “But it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Well, I wish you two lots of fun on your honeymoon,” Sting said with a grin.

“You’re _horrible_ , Eucliffe,” Lyon said drily before he rested one hand on Sherry’s shoulder and gently squeezed it. “Suppose we should get back to our hotel, then.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she agreed before she turned her attention back at Rogue for a moment. “Keep us updated, yes? I want to know that she made it out alive.”

“No worries, I’ll write you a postcard once we have set her up somewhere far away from the Division,” Rogue said with a short nod before he turned around and disappeared.

“He really hates goodbyes,” Yukino explained quietly with a shrug as if to say _‘what can you do about that?’_ before she, too, smiled one last time at everyone before she walked away.

“Don’t call me again for another year, Eucliffe,” Sherry said as she leaned against her partner, her lips curling up into a smirk. “Unless, of course, you get married and need to invite me.”

“I don’t need to be a Watcher to know that you’ll get married before me,” he replied with a broad grin before he had the audacity to wink at Lyon and follow his girlfriend.

“Suppose they are all bad with goodbyes,” Lyon said as they started to walk as well, humming a faintly familiar melody under his breath as they passed crowds of more or less lucky gamblers.

“Goodbyes _are_ horrible,” she stated as they climbed up a few stairs to get one good luck at the town. After all, neither of them had any plans on returning anytime soon.

“They certainly are, yes.”


	8. but i've been taking you for granted ;; araren & sherryon

**_but i've been taking you for granted_ **

**Characters** : Ren Akatsuki, Arania Webb, Sherry Blendy, Lyon Vastia

 **Summary** : And it took some time but I understand it now.

* * *

 

The last fight had started just like the first and the hundreds in between: she had been upset with him about something he had done wrong and he had been unable to admit that he had messed up. Because he was proud and his pride did not allow him to admit that she was right when she hissed at him and told him that it was not okay that he had called her irritating in front of the whole world.

She had been furious with him before and she had threatened to break things off more than once in the past but she had never gone through with it and so he had figured that she would calm down again this time around as well but apparently, her patience with him had ran out a long time ago and she had reached her limits.

And so he watched silently while she hissed and huffed at him, her voice somersaulting because she was furious – and his lack of reaction seemed to fuel her anger which made no sense. He had read somewhere that women did not like it when someone talked back but apparently his fiancée was different in this aspect because she did not care about his silence, she wanted for him to say something about it.

“I can’t do this,” she snapped as she paced around in the room, bright pink hair flying behind her. “I can’t act like I don’t mind anything at all anymore, Ren, seriously.”

He had travelled to Zinnia to check up on her when she had not shown up in his guild for more than two weeks without a single message and although he was not much of a fan of the town she lived in, he had decided that once in a while, a sacrifice had to be made. And so there they were, in the middle of her living room. Well, she was walking around the room, pale and nearly sickly looking, while he was sitting on the couch.

“…what did I do this time?” he asked as he briefly mused if she would go on and on again about the script mage in her guild who had made it his purpose in life to steal the stars for his girlfriend, something Sherry apparently considered to be a rational thing to do.

“You basically threw me into the flames just to look cool in front of the world!” she snapped as she twirled around to face him, her cheeks suddenly crimson with anger as she took a forceful step into his direction. “See, I get that you want to look good in public. But you dared to embarrass me to look good, hell, you publically _humiliated_ me!”

So it was indeed about the things he had said during the fight against that silly woman from Mermaid Heel, he should have figured. But then, she had said nothing about it for the durance of the tournament and she had acted normal, well, she had acted like usually.

“I was honest when I said I can’t get into it without you,” he replied as he wondered if this would be enough to soothe her anger or if he would have to make some public statement to fix what he had messed up when he had called her irritating – although it was true, too.

“Yes, I know that you were honest but – did you ever consider how this makes me feel?” she asked sharply as the colour faded from her face and her voice grew dangerously soft while her eyes just as cold as the ice her teammate used for his magic, the ice that was colder than Eve’s snow. It was weird for Ren because in all the years he had known her, he had always associated her with warmth and never with cold. “You keep making me feel like Fiore’s biggest joke, Ren,” she continued as she shook her head. “I tried to make this relationship work for the last six years and I tried so hard not to care when people whisper, when they talk behind my back and call me foolish for thinking that it can work out. I tried so hard, I believed _it could work_.” She reached up, massaging her temples for a brief moment before yet another sigh escaped her. “But it takes two people, doesn’t it?”

“And I am in it just as much as you are,” he replied but the words tasted stale on his tongue and probably sounded lame to her ears because they had been at this point too many times for her to actually believe a single word he was saying.

“Are you, really?” she asked, her eyebrows building two perfect arcs on her forehead while she slowly shook her head. “I really wish I wouldn’t feel like that’s another pretty lie.”

“I don’t lie,” he snapped because for all the flaws he had, this was not one of them. He did not lie to her, he did not feel like it was wise because she was far too good at catching lies and the last thing he wanted was to be known as a liar because this was truly dishonourable.

“I suppose you do but you to tell yourself that it’s the truth,” she said grimly as she smoothed invisible wrinkles out of her blouse, a gesture that occurred more frequent when she was nervous about something. He knew all the little signals that gave her away again and again but he had never seen as many at once as he was spotting right now.

“Sherry, stop this nonsense right there,” he said grimly as he shifted his position on the couch, no longer feeling quite as comfortable because he picked up on the tension in the room, the tension that was rolling off her in waves, the tension she was radiating like a nuclear bomb. “I really don’t want to fight about this right now so … let’s just stop it, yes?§

“Would it kill you, really, to just admit that you are wrong for once in your lifetime?” she asked as she leaned her head against the window and he felt like something inside of her had just fallen apart and that this would influence his life in some matter and that he would most likely not appreciate whatever consequence this would have.

“What do you mean?” he asked as he pushed himself off the couch and stood, his arms crossed and his teeth gritted because whatever she had to say, he would take it like a man.

“You already know what I’m going to say,” she replied as she looked over her shoulder.

“I obviously do not know or I wouldn’t have asked,” he snorted as his fingernails dug into his palms. If she wanted to cleanse herself from whatever toxic level she saw in their relationship, she could do it bit she would have to do it on her own because he did not quite agree with her. They were not quite as bad for each other as she insisted on making it sound. He was not really good at showing it but he did care about her, he did love her – and this should be sufficient, no? He did not understand why she was on set on demanding more and more and more from him.

“We are on our best way to really destroy everything,” she said as she continued to glare at him. “And I really can no longer pretend … I can no longer lie about being alright with this mess.”

Oh, she was being vicious now but this was something he had always seen coming because while the mythological animal of his guild was a pegasus, a rather peaceful being, the patron of her guild was a lamia, a woman who was half snake and had the reputation of being quite cruel. And he had never underestimated her ability of ruthlessness because, frankly, where she had always been able to rely on his stubbornness, he had always been able to count on her cold pragmatism – because for a woman with such strong ideals, she could be rather ruthless had times. He should have kept in mind that Sherry Blendy did not pull her punched, not even when she cared about someone. When she had something to say, she was not the kind of person to keep silent. And apparently, he was about to end on the receiving end of what she had to say out loud.

“…you are breaking up with me,” he said quietly while he mused why this did not surprise him. Someone with lesser self-confidence than him would have guessed that it was because he had always been second choice, that he had always been the replacement for the one she had always loved more, for the one she had never stopped loving even though the love had never been mutual. Although, this was a little too harsh: the level and the depth of love had never been the same because Lyon Vastia had – for all his flaws – always cared about his teammates.

“Am I?” she asked back, blinking in confusion before her facial expression shifted and uncertainty was replaced by confidence. “I suppose I am.”

“…you usually know that you break up with someone before they ask you if you are,” he said drily before he reached for his jacket as a small object landed on the black fabric. A small, glittering object. “You know, there was no reason to give it back,” he said as he picked up the ring and turned towards the door. “It’s not like as if there’s someone else I could give it to.”

In the end, the empty space she had left behind when she had closed the door behind him and he had walked out of her life had been surprisingly big. He had figured that he cared a good deal more about her than he cared about most people when he had actively sought out reconciliation after their first fight – although back then, Jenny had shoved him out the door and into the next train to Zinnia because in her opinion, he would be crazy to let someone like Lamia Scale’s Doll Play mage walk out of his life without a fight.

But this time around, it was far too late to fix anything. He had realised his mistake, he had realised where he had gone wrong – and he had accepted that only a complete moron would take him back and he knew (better than most people) that Sherry Blendy was no moron.

She was not quite as dedicated to studies and learning as her younger cousin but if there was someone who was the walking definition of emotional intelligence, it would be her. She knew people and she knew herself and she knew exactly what she deserved in this life.

Perhaps, in another world, he could have made it work out. In another world, he would have realised how much Sherry had always meant to him before she had broken up with him but then, even in another world, he would still be Ren and this meant that he would still be too dumb to realise that it was easy to make her smile, that it only took a bit of attention – and that it was worth embarrassing himself when she smiled and laughed about it. But ultimately, he had been too immature to realise what a real relationship was about until it had been over and although he regretted that he had hurt her and the way it had ended, he could not bring himself to regret that it had happened.

He had learned his lesson and there was no way that he would ever allow himself to hurt someone he cared about again, not even when hurting the other person was required to maintain his ego. His ego was not worth hurting others over – this was something Hibiki had repeated over and over while Eve had nodded along.

There was no reason for Ren to feel bitter about this because in the end, he had cared enough about her to be highly invested in Sherry’s happiness and when a life without him was what offered her the happiness she did deserve after all the emotional straining _bullshit_ she had been through over the past years, it was something he could accept because he was no complete asshole. Sherry was not necessarily the kind of person everyone liked and invited to parties but she was a good person and sometimes, good people actually got the nice things they deserved.

But really, he should have known that there was no way in hell even an idiot like Lyon Vastia – who was probably the only person in whole Fiore who had never been aware of the major crush Sherry had had on him back in the days – would let her walk away from him a second time and although this stung a little at first before he reminded himself that he had lost his former fiancée because of his own mistakes and not because someone else had been better than him. And it was not like the doll play mage was a prize to be won by whoever was the greatest there was at the moment – and frankly, he was fair enough to admit that she deserved nothing but the very best.

And yet, it felt a little awkward because it was obvious that she was falling back in love with the man she had loved once but this was not even what felt awkward to Ren. It was the lack of anger he felt about this, the lack of any emotion aside from quiet happiness he felt for her.

And this made no sense, did it? He should not be happy for her, right? He should rage inwardly about the way her face lit up when the ice mage made a pretty flower out of ice for her after a assignment that was handled by Light Alliance 2.0, one without Fairy Tail (they had been disbanded months ago for some reason) but instead with Mermaid Heel which meant that he had to deal with the green-haired woman who probably had it out for him for some reason. But he did not feel angry, he only rolled his eyes and chuckled at the comment ex-Fairy-Tail-now-Mermaid-Heel-member Erza Scarlet made about the two Lamias needing a room.

“I don’t think you’re broken, _Ren-chan_ ,” the annoying Web mage said as she stirred more sugar into her tea and tilted her head while her lips formed a small smirk. “If anything, you’re handling this in a mature manner,” she added before she lifted the cup to her lips.

“I shouldn’t be okay with this,” he argued as he rubbed his cheek, sighing in discontent when he reopened the scratch he had gotten earlier when he had not dodged a blow fast enough.

“Seriously?” Arania asked as she rolled her eyes at him before she shook her shoes off her feet and rested her legs on the empty chair next to hers. “Being okay with a breakup is _good_.”

“We were engaged,” he argued as he tapped his foot against the ground in the steady rhythm of the music that was playing in the background. “…take that into account, please.”

“After you never took it into account when you flirted with others? Me included?” the mermaid scoffed as she reached for the plate of cookies that stood between them. “Look, I always thought she was a bit stupid for not dumping your sorry ass years ago.”

This was exactly why Ren did not mind talking to Arania as much as he probably should have. She was rude, lacked tact – but she was honest. And she had no problems whatsoever when it came to calling him out on whatever bullshit he was sprouting in her opinion. She was not like Jenny who was too kind most of the time to just hit him with the truth because she felt like members of the same guild should be treating one another with respect. Well, even if Arania were to share Miss Fiore’s attitude, it would not apply to him because he was no member of her guild for obvious reasons.

“…oh yeah, because this is seriously what I need to hear right now,” he said sarcastically as he scratched his neck and looked around in the room they were waiting in for their respective guild masters to show up and tell them how well they worked together on their assignment. The Knight was leaning against the wall while she wrote some kind of letter, the both mages from Lamia Scale were sitting on the shadowy side of the room, away from the sun, and Ren remembered that Sherry did originate from the north and was not the biggest fan of high temperatures.

“You wanna know what I think?” Arania asked as she raised an eyebrow and brushed some leftover dirt off her suit. “You are painfully aware of how you killed whatever love she once felt for you and now, you compensate for this guilt by not minding how quick she moves on.”

“Fact is, Vastia’s a better boyfriend than I ever was,” Ren said grimly as he stared into the depths of his coffee, trying to figure out the meaning of life – or just to avoid the woman’s piercing eyes.

“Only if you’re into flowers and dancing and stuff,” Arania said as she rolled her eyes at him, something he knew just from listening to her voice. “Stop wallowing in self-pity though, Ren-chan,” she added as she threw a cookie at him. “You are still on the list of Mages You Want to Be Your Boyfriend so hope isn’t lost.”

“…this is the weirdest uplifting comment I ever heard,” he replied drily as he looked up.

“But it is true, too,” she replied as she reached for her cup again. “Now, how’s your face?”

“It’s alright … I’ll probably live to see another day,” he said he yawned and angled his face towards the sun as he closed his eyes for a moment. “Thanks for asking, though.”

For some reason, he had not felt like flirting with Arania lately and this was a little weird because usually, it was second nature for him. So maybe she was wrong and something inside of him was broken because currently, she was one out of very few females he talked to without automatically flirting.

And since he had not felt like flirting, he had dropped his usual tsundere act in her presence as well. Maybe it was because she was something like a friend and there was no way that he would talk to a friend the same way he talked to someone he was interested in on a romantic/sexual level. Different objectives of communication, different manners of talking.

(He was no complete moron, thank you, Gray Fullbuster, for implying otherwise.)

“I can’t have you suing me for not covering your back properly,” she said as she – once again – rolled her eyes at him and raised an eyebrow.

“I might lose my position on that list after all,” he replied with a smirk. “Although, you know, I’m surprised that you even read the Weekly Sorcerer.”

She gave an indignant scoff before she reached for her cup again. “Some of our newer members read it and they asked me how I felt about having fought someone on the list,” she said as she made a face at the lack of tea within her cup. “That’s how I know about it.”

“Hey,” Sherry interrupted as she appeared on the side of their table, a disgruntled ice mage in tow. “Would you mind if we sat with you? We lost our table to Scarlet and, um, her admirers.”

Ren lifted his gaze and looked across the room. Sure enough, the table the both members of Lamia Scale had previously occupied was now taken by the Knight and a bunch of other people he had never seen before but who seemed to be set on impressing the redhead which was a futile task – not even Ichiya had ever managed to woo the woman.

“We don’t mind at all,” Arania said with the fakest smile he had ever seen on her face.

“We don’t?” he asked as he rolled his eyes at her. “Apparently we don’t. So … have a seat.”

“… _Rin_ ,” the ice mage said and Ren wanted to ask if the other man was doing this on purpose or if he really could not remember his name. It was not even like he was still insulted by the casual way Lyon Vastia kept renaming it, it was just a little bit weird for him at times.

“Vastia,” he replied nonetheless before he grabbed another cookie. “…nice work, earlier.”

No matter what he would say later on, it was awkward to sit at the same table as his former fiancée, her new boyfriend and the woman he had been fighting against in a tournament mere months ago when he had made a statement that was part of the reason why his former fiancée was his former fiancée and not his current wife-to-be. It was weird because Arania was frighteningly polite and Sherry had always been well-versed in the art of small talk while Vastia was silent for the longest time until Sherry kicked him – not too gently – underneath the table, without that her polite smile faltered for even a moment.

Afterwards, the ice mage did talk with them.


	9. everything will be alright (if you keep me next to you) ;; sherry, sting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no murder on the dance floor but it’s still fun.
> 
> for lolly on valentine's day  
> technically part of the _you look like my next mistake_ series so i might move it

Sherry Blendy was downright pissed at her former date for not just cancelling on her two hours before the spring (read: valentine’s day) ball started but for – and this was the downright insulting part – getting her into the same situation as Sting Eucliffe who was both her childhood friend and the one person who frequently got onto her nerves. And the cherry on top of the disaster was that at this very moment, Sting and Sherry were not even talking with each other after they had fought over something which had been likely utterly ridiculous.

(It was not their first fight and it would not be their last fight either; they were both stubborn and strongly disliked the idea of having to admit that someone else knew better than them.)

Nonetheless, she was not even surprised when she put a finishing touches to her makeup and spotted her usually-best friend in the mirror, lurking in the doorway behind her, dressed in his best suit and throwing a bouquet of flowers – one that had been ordered for the girl that had dumped him which explained the shade of pink the roses had – from one hand to the other.

She did not move a single muscle for a moment and then, she sighed deeply as she rose from the small stool standing by her vanity and smoothed out the skirts of her dress. “I should’ve known,” she said drily before she shrugged and reached for her purse and barely managed to resist the temptation of twirling around in front of the mirror like she was a little girl. 

“I’d even be willing to wager that you did know,” Sting replied as he pushed himself away from the doorframe and held out the flowers with the most exaggerated bow she had ever seen. It was normal for them to fall back into their casualness; after all, it had been honed since they had been little children and although they had gotten older since the days when they had ran over the fields around their town, some things were still the same.

“Perhaps,” she said with a shrug as she accepted the flowers, not even caring about the way the shade of pink did not go at all with the soft green and the bright silver of her dress. She also did not care that her dress and his tie did not look like they matched – mostly because details like this were what others worried themselves sick about while she simply did not care.

She did care about the way she was perceived in the world and at sixteen, she knew that someone who paid more attention to the clothes they wore than to the words they spoke would never amount to anything in life and to fail was something that terrified her more than she would ever admit to anyone.

“Ready to go?” he asked as he tugged on his tie, his face betraying that he did not feel comfortable at all because most of the time, he spent as star of whatever sports team had gotten their hands on him first and so there were only a few occasions for him to wear formal clothing; one of them being the award ceremony their mayor held once a year to hand over trophies and small amounts of money to especially skilled athletes.

She nodded as she reached for her jacket – it was chilly in February and she was not going to risk a cold in the middle of what would led to the exam period of their term – and then, she did twirl around and watched in silent satisfaction how her skirts flared around her. It was childish, yes, but it was something she had been doing for as long as she could think back to dressing up nicely for one reason or another. “Ready to go,” she confirmed, slipping into her shoes and looping her arm through his.

(Their fight was not important now, not when they had other things to take care of, not when it had never been about anything of substance in the first place.)

(This was a fight they could sweep under the rug without fearing that they would regret this decision.)

“Dad is driving us,” he said as they walked down the stairs, slower than usual when they ran down the stairs to get to the kitchen when her brother called, telling them that he had cooked dinner and that they better hurried to get to the kitchen before the food could get cold or when they were running late for a meeting with their other friends after Sherry had had trouble to find her left shoe.

“…did he look at you with pity in his eyes when you told him your date cancelled on you?” she asked and in spite of her words, there was no malice in her voice. Selective as she was when it came to sharing her affections and her kindness with the world, he was one of the lucky ones who could count on her being civil and kind most of the time.

“He patted my shoulder and started what I believe was meant to be a  _‘son, there are so many more fishes in the sea’_ speech when I remembered that you wouldn’t have a date either,” the blond boy grinned before he was interrupted by the arrival of her older brother in the doorway.

“Oh, didn’t know you were going with Sting,” Jura said as he raised his brows and Sherry once more wondered what was going on beneath his non-existent hair. When she had been a child, she had been able to understand Jura’s thoughts but when she had grown up, this understanding had slowly turned into a deep-rooted acceptance of the fact that he would always know better than her because he was older and had made the experiences she had yet to make. And then, there was the regret that he did never actually try to talk her out of anything because he trusted her to make the right calls and because he wanted her to learn the same way he had.

“There have been, um, changes,” Sting replied as he held out his fist to the older male and Sherry sighed inwardly as they went through their elaborate (but not so) secret handshake. “So now we’re going to go to the ball thing together.”

“I guess than I can save my  _‘get her back in one piece or I’ll have your head’_  speech for another time then,” Jura said drily as he nodded at Sherry who was impressed by her own ability to ignore what could have been potentially mortifying for her. She was too used to his protectiveness and was nearly convinced that if he had not commented on it himself, she would have.

“No worries, Jura, I’ll keep an eye on her,” Sting promised and she rolled her eyes now because she could protect herself just fine and had never needed anyone’s help to do so.

“I think we should get going now,” she sighed as she closed the buttons of her coat and nodding at her brother before they walked out the door and got into the car of Sting’s father who was once more cracking jokes that were laced with some genuinely good advice.

They reached the school only mere minutes later; after all, theirs was a small town and there was no such thing as long ways. However, it also meant that there was no such thing as privacy either and a long-suffering sigh escaped Sherry as she lifted the skirts of her dress as she got out of the car, scanning the surroundings.

“Don’t worry too much about them,” Sting said as he rolled his shoulders, waving goodbye to his father before he offered her his arm again, playing the part of the perfect gentleman to perfection. Of course, it was all an act and the moment no one would be watching anymore, he would be back to his usual self but once in a while, she allowed herself to be entertained by his antics. “It won’t be long and we’ll be gone forever.”

He certainly had a point there.

Neither of them had intentions to follow the same, boring part as the ones they went to class with because when they talked about what they would do after finishing school, they talked about places that were far away from their hometown, places with names they had had to practice before pronouncing them correctly – places that seemed to be worlds away for now.

“Oh my goodness,” one of the girls from Sherry’s track team said, clapping her hands like a baby seal as she approached. “Your dress, it’s beautiful. Really, you look stunning.”

Usually, Sherry’s patience with her teammates was longer and it took more for her to snap but she had had a difficult week and was still stressing out about the results of her Fiorean test and so she was easily irritated and it took far more from her not to snap at the blonde than usually. Nonetheless, she somehow managed not to rip off the other girl’s head although she could tell that the compliment was false and not genuine at all. “Oh, thanks,” she said drily as she shrugged. “My brother helped me to pick it out,” she added, playing the ‘poor, innocent orphan’ card once more, much to Sting’s not so hidden entertainment.

“And you, Sting,” the other girl continued, her voice dropping into a softer, more flirtatious one. “You’re looking sharp as always.”

It was an unfortunate side effect of being friends with the probably most attractive boy in their school – a statement she would claim to never have made, even on her death bed – that there was always a girl who had no other plan than to flirt with him for reasons Sherry could not comprehend, likely because she had been friends with him since they had been both nothing but kids with tooth gaps and even bigger dreams than these days.

“Thank you,” he replied calmly before he mentioned towards the entrance and she smirked as she reached into her purse for her ticket to the ball.

“So, you two…” the girl smirked as she followed them towards the entrance. “Are you here together or together-together?”

“We’re here together because our original dates ditched us and rather than to sit at home and wallow in self-pity, we decided to come here and dance until our feet bleed,” Sting shrugged and then, they disappeared in the crowd, leaving the other girl and her noisiness behind at the entrance where she reunited with her friends.

“Nicely said,” Sherry muttered under her breath as they looked around the room, trying to locate other friends they had with little success as they were surprisingly early for a chance, and got their drinks from the bar.

“I sense a dash of irony but for the sake of everyone, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear it,” he replied as he opened the program resting on the table next to them, skimming over the page with the order in which the DJ would play the songs, his facial expression impressively illustrating his opinion on the songs. It was a little known fact about him but once in a while, he liked to cut loose and just dance the night away.

It had been his aunt who had signed him up for dancing classes when he had been younger – but this was something they did not talk about, ever – and so she was not even surprised when he put down his glass with a grim expression on his face after his eyes had caught sight of their former dates spinning around on the dance floor. “This is _ridiculous_ ,” he huffed and she was happy about the bad lightning in the hall because otherwise, he would have seen her crooked grin.

“This is the second time he stepped onto her feet within this song,” she replied nonchalantly as she leaned against the table, turning her head to the face him as her grin faded away. “I slowly get the idea that it was for my own benefit for him to ditch me.”

Sting laughed as he tapped his foot to the ground along to the beat of the music, humming the song under his breath. “Well, your feet won’t be bruised,” he said and she sighed inwardly before she reached for his wrist and dragged him onto the dance floor, easily finding the right rhythm because although she was not her younger cousin who had a mother who dragged her to ballet classes (which was a horrible idea, given Chelia’s clumsiness), Sherry was still athletic enough to keep up with the beat and the movements of the crowd around them.

“I entrust my feet to you,” she said drily as she rested her hand on Sting’s side, following his lead as he spun her around because when it came down to it, she could let go of her usual craving for control. And it was easier to just let Sting have this rather than to fight with him over something as unimportant as this.

“And I promise I won’t step onto them, not literally at least,” he said as he rolled his eyes and she nearly laughed but then, she focused on the beat of the music and amidst the deafening bass and the flickering lights, she got caught up in her own movement, nearly missing the glare her former date threw her from across the room. But although she did notice that there was someone glaring at her, she did not care at all because she was singing along to the song under her breath, too soft for anyone but Sting to hear.

“Too kind, good sir, too kind,” she said as she moved backwards, narrowly avoiding to knock over another duo before she spun, her laughter ringing out louder than usually.

“I have to say, you’re a better dancer than my original date,” Sting said as he pulled her back in.

“I’m still too tall for you to be the perfect match,” she shrugged before she grinned at him. “I’m going to help you find the  _perfect_  partner one day, believe me.”

“That’s exactly the kind of statement that makes me have nightmares,” he smirked and she huffed. He was a bit of an ingrate at times but although he kept complaining, she knew that it was never serious – especially since they both knew that she would never make him go out with someone who would be unpleasant to deal with.

_“How rude.”_

“It’s been ten years and you still complain about that?” he asked as he rolled his eyes.

“Oh, I’m just starting to worry that you’ll never find a girlfriend and that one day, I’ll have to tell my children about their sad, lonely uncle Sting who shows up on Christmas with a bag full of presents – you know, like a cautionary tale,” she shrugged before the cruel grin disappeared from her face, mostly because she was confident in his ability to settle down with a nice girl who would put up with him in ways she would never be able to because sometimes, they clashed and when this happened, grass stopped growing where they had collided.

“If you say children, I feel like you mean  _cats_ ,” he said as he smirked and rolled his eyes.

After nearly ten years of friendship, they had their little traditions and their inside jokes and sometimes, she wondered how her life would have played out if they had not ended up as friends. It likely would have been immensely boring because although she was sometimes irritated by his recklessness, she could not deny that some experience were worth it to get into trouble.

“Talking of cats,” she started as she raised both eyebrows, “how’s Lector doing?”

And once again, they spiralled down in a conversation about his cat who had the unfortunate habit of stealing things that belonged to Sting’s father and dropping them off in Sting’s room, getting him into trouble again and again because it was difficult to believe that the cat was genuinely that much of a troublemaker.

“He’s doing just great,” Sting replied and she grinned at him before one of the boys she had originally turned down after she had accepted the date offer from the guy who was still walking all over the other girl’s feet appeared on their side.

“Can I steal you away for a dance?” he asked with a polite little bow.

“I guess so,” she replied before she patted Sting’s shoulder and let go of him, her movements losing a bit of her previous enthusiasm. “See you at the last dance, latest,” she promised before she let the other drag her off into the spinning vortex of dancing students, watching from the corner of her eye that Sting, too, was quickly approached by others who wanted to dance.


	10. busy streets and busy lives ;; lucy&hibiki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And when we go crashing down, we come back every time 'cause we never go out of style.

The last time she had seen him had been five years ago when they had graduated. The memory was still on her mind because he had been the one who had congratulated her first, the one who had clapped loudest because in spite of having had a fierce rivalry, Hibiki Laytes had also been her friend and friends did not leave friends standing on the stage while cold silence reigned around them.

Afterwards, the whirlwind known as life had spiralled too quickly around them to stay in contact – they had both moved away and they had chosen different universities – but now, after all these years, they were back in their old school and there was a brief moment of awkwardness when she did not know how to greet him because it had been a long time and the last time he had come up in conversation, it had been when Juvia had brought him up, revealing that Hibiki was developing computers for the government, that he had been recruited for the task straight out of university.

But while she was still looking for words – how mortifying, she was a writer, after all – the blond man sat down next to her, grinning his most charming smile –

she had always thought that he might make a good model, too

— and skipping the troublesome small talk by getting straight to the point.

(She had never been more grateful for his bluntness before.)

“Missed you at the wedding,” he started and for a moment, she wondered which out of the weddings he meant because there had been more than one in the past five years. Apparently, marrying the high school sweetheart was still on vogue, no matter what the magazines said.

“Which wedding?” she asked as she raised both eyebrows at him. She knew that he had not attended the eventful wedding between Natsu and Juvia, the wedding that had ended with a raging bride – Juvia had not found it amusing that red wine had been spilled all over her dress and Lucy had made the mental note that if she would ever get married, she would ban red wine from the place.

“Ren and Sherry,” Hibiki said before he nearly keeled over as laughter ran through his body.

“Thought Blendy married Vastia,” she replied as she furrowed her brows. After all, she had received an invitation to the wedding which had taken place mere months ago while she had been away for business.

“Oh yeah, she did,” he nodded, regaining his seriousness. “People did object to the idea that she would marry Ren … I think Scarlet threw the bride’s bouquet at the priest … and Orland nearly broke Ren’s foot when she stepped onto it.”

“Sounds really eventful,” Lucy agreed, suddenly happy that she had missed out on it because it sounded like it had been a genuine nightmare – like most weddings she had heard about. Apparently, their old classmates had an unofficial contest who could have the most chaotic wedding.

“I still think that there’ve been weddings far worse,” he replied with a shrug as he opened the menu to scan the page with the drinks. “So far, everyone survived the weddings.”

“You’ve been watching too much ** _Four Weddings and a Funeral_** ,” she admonished gently as she looked around the room, trying to remember all the stories she had heard about their old classmates and to figure out if the stories had been truths or lies.

(She did believe that Mirajane had received the offer to become a model but she did not know why the white-haired woman had turned it down.)

“Can’t help it, it’s my favourite movie,” he said with yet another shrug before he raised an eyebrow. “What about you? Any plans on marrying anytime soon?”

“I’d need a groom for that and sadly, I don’t have much time for dating,” she said as she rolled her eyes. Hibiki was hardly the first one to bring the matter up to her. Juvia had been trying to set her up with someone ever since she had gotten engaged and Erza had skipped all stages of gentle persuasion by arranging a date with her old childhood friend Jellal, sadly forgetting about the part where the man had already a girlfriend which had made matters awkward.

“Which reminds me – how’s your current project going?” he asked as he leaned closer, his eyes shining with genuine interest which was flattering because while she had been working hard to become a writer, he had been recruited by the government to develop something that benefitted the entire country.

“Don’t tell anyone but – I’ve been writing on a book about my experiences with my travels,” she answered, lowering her voice ever so slightly because she had been keeping this a secret from nearly everyone so far but it was difficult to keep a secret while wanting to talk about it all the time.

“I’ll make sure to buy it once it’s published,” he said and she made the mental note of editing the dedication a little bit, including him.


	11. get your game on (go play) ;; sherryon, sting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years later, they are still the same.

Lyon Vastia was silent as he entered the hospital room, the green scarf still wrapped around his neck. He had come to watch the match and while he had expected a close outcome – both teams had excellent chasers, after all – he would never have counted on something like this. It had been a perfect draw – because his girlfriend, the woman who hardly ever missed, had given away a hundred-percent-chance after the best chaser from the other team had been hit by a bludger.

Of course, to say that Sherry Blendy was a woman who was easy to understand would be a lie because she was confusing, even when she was not trying to be. He had known her since her first year at Hogwarts and ever since she had made it onto the house team of Slytherin in her second year, he had frequently played against her. And he had to admit, as far as chasers went, she was one of the best – which explained the outrage of her team’s fans after she had dropped the quaffle to pull her wand out of her sleeve, casting the spell that was the reason why Sting Eucliffe, top chaser of the Appleby Arrows, was in a rather good state, considering how deep he had fallen after the well-aimed bludger had hit his head.

(Natsu Dragneel was a damned good beater, that was for sure.)

But while Sherry’s action had been fair and would probably gain her a commendation at the end of the season, it had cost her team the match and the fans of Puddlemere United had a reputation of being especially unforgiving towards player who had loyalties aside from the team.

Not that she would care much about this. As a former Slytherin, she was far too used to the glares and the snide remarks to lose any sleep about this – although it might speed up her decision to change teams. Especially since she had a longstanding offer from Pride of Portree (and Lyon would rather like to play with her rather than against her, for a chance).

“Vastia,” the blond chaser greeted from where he was sitting on the bed, still dressed in the mud-covered clothes he had been wearing when he had fallen off his broom. “She isn’t here yet; I bet that Dragneel’s currently burying her body somewhere,” he added with a grim expression that was strangely reminiscent of guilt on his face.

“She’ll be fine,” Lyon said as he pulled a chair away from the small table in the room and sat down. Usually, there was no way of telling where Sherry would go after a match had not gone according to plan but this time, one of her oldest and best friends was in hospital and so she was guaranteed to show up there sooner rather than later. A Slytherin’s friendship was gained by effort and nearly impossible to lose.

“I should’ve seen that bludger coming,” the blond man grumbled as he sneezed, still just as sensitive to strong smells as he had been back when they had been students.

“In that rain? I was surprised when the match wasn’t cancelled in the first place,” Lyon said drily, hoping that the other would have stopped blaming himself by the time Sherry would make her overdue appearance. “It was just some really bad luck, that’s all.”

Rain, bad luck – and a beater who knew what he was doing. It had been a bad combination.

“Both captains wanted that, actually,” the chaser said as he tapped his finger against the nightstand in the rhythm of the national anthem. “The league said no. I should sue.”

It was something Lyon felt would be wise because the rainstorm had not been surprising at all; it had been announced for days and most experts had even predicted that the match would be rescheduled. The league had made a different call and now, one of the country’s best chasers would take a few days to recover from an accident that could have been easily prevented.

“If you do, would Aguria be your lawyer?” the white-haired man asked, a teasing vibe in his voice because he deserved this, after all the years Sting had been teasing Lyon and Sherry about their relationship. It was only just, somewhat delayed revenge because by the time Sting and Yukino had started to date, Lyon had been out of school.

For a moment, the other quidditch player was silent before he scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I’ve never been that obnoxious in my teasing,” he protested. “I really don’t get what she sees in you.”

“I’m smart and a successful quidditch player – what more could a woman want?” the former Ravenclaw asked as he lifted an eyebrow and rather than to continue their banter (which had hit the lowest level already anyway), they fell into pleasant silence as they waited.

Sherry arrived two minutes later in a whirlwind of colours. Her bright hair was in a messy ponytail and her face was lacking all makeup as her Invisibility charm slowly faded from her. For someone who had just become enemy number one of all Puddlemere United fans, she was in an extraordinarily good mood as she flicked her wand and conjured a bouquet of flowers. “First things first, I don’t want to care about whatever the papers write tomorrow so … make sure I don’t see it, Leon,” she said instead of a greeting before she handed the flowers to Sting and wrapped one arm around of Lyon’s neck and kissed him briefly.

“You get it, darling,” he replied, expertedly ignoring the gagging noises Sting made in the background, mostly because this had not changed since they had been in school.

“Hello to you too, Sting, how is your head, Sting?” the blond chaser muttered in his worst female voice Lyon had ever had the misfortune of hearing. “Why, thank you, Blendy, I’m good.”

“You’re such a drama queen, Eucliffe,” the woman sighed as she rolled her eyes and reached into the pocket of her cloak to withdraw her sunglasses, toying around with them while she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, likely more concerned by the upcoming public outrage regarding her person than she would ever let herself admit.

“But apparently, you care enough about me to keep me from dying on your watch,” the blond man replied and Lyon had to hide his grin as he watched how his girlfriend scoffed and rolled her eyes before she playfully punched her former chaser partner’s shoulder and flipped back her hair.

“That was just because I really hate funerals,” she replied but if she had wanted for it to be a good excuse, she would have lied more convincingly – this could only be called a weak attempt.

“Well, how do you guys feel about getting out of this mess and going somewhere where it’s nicer?” Lyon asked as he rose to his feet, wrapping an arm around his chaser, silently letting her know that no matter what would happen, he would be there for her.

“Stealing us away from our clubs? Naughty, naughty,” Sting replied as he lifted his forefinger at Lyon and gesticulated widely – nearly poking out Sherry’s eye if she had not quickly stepped back.

“I was actually suggesting to get some drinks somewhere where no one has watched the match but I know that Sherry at least got an offer from Pride,” Lyon replied calmly as he decided that he never wanted to make a questionable offer in Sting’s presence again, out of mere fear for other people’s eyes.

“I said I’d think about it, only last week,” Sherry muttered darkly before her face brightened up, “but I’m halfway sure that I’m going to get fired anyway … my coach was pretty mad about today.”

“It would be nice to play with you instead of against you for a change,” the blond chaser said slowly, slightly inclining his head into the direction of the woman and Lyon remembered that it had been their teamwork what had made Slytherin a force to be reckoned with back in the days – their third chaser had faded from the keeper’s memory because around the time of Sherry’s fourth year, he had seemed to be nothing but a mere formality. As far as chasers went (and Lyon had been up against quite a few of them), teamwork was of utmost importance and since Sherry had been playing with the other children at her orphanage since she had been able to fly and Sting had been childhood friends with Rogue Cheney, former-Ravenclaw-turned-Pride-of-Portree-chaser, they were used to working in a team and during the Slytherin tryouts in their second year, teamwork had stomped the competition into the ground.

“If Puddlemere throws you out over being a decent human being, I’ll drop the Arrows and start over at Pride with you,” Sting said, slamming his fist against his chest and coughing as the impact was heavier than expected. “But for now, let’s get drinks.”

“Nowhere where they’ll recognise me,” Sherry muttered as she rubbed her neck. Being young, pretty and the star chaser of one of the most popular quidditch teams in the country, she had perfected charms that allowed her to disguise herself ever since she had made it into the national team and had been followed to a troublesome degree by reporters that had been all too keen on getting pictures of her doing the most normal things. Lyon was not sure how the headline _‘Sherry Blendy – buying coffee in Muggle London’_ would sell but apparently, there was a market for it.

(Being a male quidditch star seemed so much easier most of the time to Lyon.)

Sometimes, Lyon wondered how he had ever mustered up the courage to make a move on the Slytherin girl who had been throwing quaffles at him during most of their interactions. But perhaps it had been easier in school because while she had been popular as well back then, she had not been nicknamed _‘a dream come true’_ yet and been widely considered one of the most popular women in the country.

“Sounds like you’re asking for a trip to Muggle London,” Sting replied, raising his eyebrow just as Sherry flicked her wand again, removing the stains from his uniform without much flourish and swift charm work which was unsurprising; she had been one of the best at charms back in school after all.

“I guess I do want one of these pink drinks,” she shrugged before she reached into her pocket and twirled a small scroll of parchment around her fingers. “But I guess we should invite Yukino along.”

“If she tags along, we can’t talk about qui--,” Sting interrupted himself, a broad grin spreading on his face as he tapped his wand against his clothes, changing them into more suitable garb for an evening out. “Nice going there, Blendy. I am once again surprised.”

“I just don’t want to have to talk about the blunder all day,” the woman shrugged as she finished the letter she was scribbling before she opened the window and whistled, waiting for her owl to appear out of seemingly nowhere. After she sent off the letter, she shrugged and sighed deeply. “Sometimes, I guess, I like to pretend that I get things right on first try,” she explained with a hesitant smile and Lyon knew that she did not talk strictly about her career; she was the first who had been confirmed a member of the national team from the people they had gone to school with. She was talking about other things, matters between people – because sometimes, she had closed doors before they had been opened.

“And you will get it all right in the end,” Sting said as he adjusted his collar with a broad grin. “Now, let’s get going.”

“I don’t get why you’re so enthusiastic – you got a head injury and took medicine so you won’t be drinking any alcohol,” Sherry smirked as she patted his shoulder and brushed past them, leaving the room.

_“She’s so mean sometimes.”_


	12. we'll stop the clock together ;; silvur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **I'm wakin' up at the start of the end of the world but it's feeling just like every other morning before now I wonder what my life is gonna mean if it's gone**

** 11 **

* * *

He does not understand his clock and decides that is broken because it tells him that he is going to meet his soul mate four hundred years from now and he does not know much about science but he is pretty sure that he is supposed to be dead and gone by the time this day comes around.

That is until he slips on the frozen path high up in the mountains and slides down-down-down, his mind in disarray because there is no way in hell that he will survive this fall. And so he silently apologises to his family and to the silhouette he has seen a few times in his dreams.

He is unconscious before he even reaches the bottom of the ravine after hitting his head against a rock.

* * *

**10**

* * *

The wheels of fate have been set into motion.

* * *

**9**

* * *

The scientist has expected to find something during his searches high up north but he has not expected a perfectly preserved male, enclosed in ice, and so he gets curious and takes a closer look at the one he has found – and recoils because, blurred by the ice, there are numbers counting down on the man’s wrist.

The man’s timer is still active.

Which means: he is still alive.

And this makes the scientific sensation perfect.

“Clive,” he addresses the expert for tectonics who is picking up rocks nearby and turns at the sudden sound of a voice.

“Yes, Dreyar?” the red-haired man asks.

“Try to get a hold on someone from Frost’s crew … she’s still in no-man’s-land, after all … we’ll have to defreeze the guy,” the black-haired scientist says as his mind hurries countless miles further north where the expert of everything related to cold is on her annual trip to uncover the secrets of the glaciers or something like this.

* * *

**8**

* * *

 

He wakes up in a sun filled room that is bright white and smells oddly in a way that reminds him of the healer’s hut, only far more potent. There is the buzzing of activity somewhere in the distance – doors are slammed shut, people talk in hushed voices – and then, there is someone standing by the end of the bed, a woman dressed in white with golden hair.

“Oh, you’re awake,” she says and her language is not quite the same as his but still similar enough for him to understand what she is saying. “I am Doctor Heartfilia.”

“Doctor,” he repeats and thinks of the supposedly better healers back in his hometown, the one who have charged more money than the others. “Healer?” he asks.

“Not that kind of doctor,” she replies and mutters words he does not understand while scribbling into her little book for a while before halting and tilting her head. “What is your name, stranger we’ve found in the ice?” she then asks and for a moment, he is even more confused.

“Silver,” he then says and she smiles before she holds out her hand in greeting.

“I’m Layla,” she smiles before she mentions towards his timer, “and I’m supposed to work with you so you can have a, well, normalish life.”

“Why do I need help?” he asks and feels nearly offended because he has not relied on anyone in his entire life and he does not feel like starting with it now.

“Because you’ve been asleep for about four hundred years,” she shrugs and mentions towards one of the weird objects at the wall, “and since you’re a person, we don’t want to keep you here forever.”

 _Four hundred years_ , he thinks and wonders if maybe, his clock has never been broken and the only reason why he has ever felt this way was because the idea of sleeping for such a long time has been too weird to even consider.

* * *

**7**

* * *

Her timer ticks silently down under her glove and the woman does not even care because the last time she has checked it, the day on which she will meet her soul mate has been far away.

As a scientist, she has accepted the idea of the soul bond when she has been a little child but while it has fascinated her, her passion has always been for something that is clearer structured, something with sharper lines – something that is colder, more rational.

The call from one of her colleagues, a week ago, has surprised her but it has not been enough of a reason for her to cut her expedition short and return home early.

No, the frozen man will have to wait – and to make do with the result of her research for now – she is too busy climbing onto mountains to take a look on the glaciers there for now.

* * *

**6**

* * *

The woman called Layla brings a fellow doctor the next time she visits, a man who is reserved and does not talk much aside from mentioning that he is the one who has found Silver in the ice. He, too, is not a medical doctor either but a historian and archaeologist as he calls it but he mentions that he is most curious to hear from Silver about his life before the fall as soon as the other man feels up to talking about it. He also mentions to Layla that he has been trying to get a hold on the ‘ice queen’ but that said woman is out of reach.

(Silver nearly suggests that rather than to rely on the silly telephone technology Layla has shown and explained to him, he should just go out and try to track the woman down the old-fashioned way.)

* * *

**5**

* * *

It is the red-haired man who skips all the nonsense who drags Silver out for a walk in the new world he has been thrown into without much of a warning and rather than to expect Silver to tell him anything, he does the talking and tells him about his time at a place he calls university where he has met Layla and Ivan, the black-haired man who does not talk much, and other people Silver has not met yet and is not sure if he ever wants to meet because they sound strange and foreign to him.

 _When_ he comes from, there have never been women who are ‘made of numbers and facts and laughter’ at the same time. Gildarts – that is the self-proclaimed rock experts first name – warns him about the ‘ice queen’ who apparently will not be happy at all and tells him to run when he feels the chill and sees ‘Snow White’s murderous twin’ which leads Silver to tell him that he does not understand and Gildarts to buy him a ‘six pack of beer’ and a ‘movie’.

(He does not quite understand why he should run from a princess but after watching the first movie, Layla stops by with a whole load of other movies.)

* * *

**4**

* * *

It is Gildarts’ bubbly soulmate who tells him that he should start to move out in the world a little more on his own and he agrees with her; he is a fierce warrior and while some of the concepts of this new world are difficult to grasp – especially money-related things – he knows that he has to step out into the world and face it without anyone holding his hand.

After all, he has been awake for three months and he no longer needs anyone to hold his hand. If he is going to meet his soul mate in only a few weeks more (which is what his clock tells him, after all), he does not want to be anyone’s charity cause.

It is sad enough that his soul mate will inevitably be dragged into the circus surrounding the ‘mystery man found in the ice’ but she does not deserve being stuck with someone who cannot pay for anything himself.

* * *

**3**

* * *

Here is the fact Ur Frost, resident ice queen of the Fiorean Scientific Institute, has always kept to herself: the reason that she is so invested in cryopreservation is that one day, she wants to be able to stop time – and by extension, death.

This has been her dearest wish ever since she has been a little girl and as she steps into the airport up high north to get on the plane back home, her skin tingles because nature has done it, has preserved a man for four hundred years – and this is of bigger interest to her than the timer that is running out.

She hums under her breath while she flies back home because something inside of her has been set aflame and as a scientist, she wants to uncover the secrets that are sleeping inside of her own chest.

Hence her frustration when she realises that rather than to head straight to Crocus, she will have to attend an important conference in Magnolia. It is a delay she should have remembered in the first place, one that should not have caught her off-guard like this.

It still does, somehow, which annoys her even more.

* * *

**2**

* * *

“She’s coming home, she’s coming home!” one of the people who have freed him from the ice scream-whispers to the neighbour, rushing down the hallways, and somehow, the sound of the young woman’s voice resonates in Silver’s head and he does not know how to stop it.

 _“…when you were free all along,”_ Gildarts hums as he taps his fingers against the stack of books he is carrying, _“New York City, where all your girls are pretty—_ oh hello there, Silver.”

“You are in a good mood today,” he says as he wonders whether or not he should inquire about the reasons for the generally good atmosphere in the entire building. Aside from the scientists from the cryopreservation department who have been extraordinarily cheerful all day, Layla has cut their ‘lesson’ short and Ivan has even been smiling when he has stopped by for a moment, dropping off another list of music recommendations.

“Well, a friend comes back after half a year of absence,” the red-haired man shrugs, his face still holding his happiness, “and she’s going to be in a good mood because she won a trophy in absence.”

By now, Silver has understood that the scientists who have found him are different from the scientists he has been seeing in the movies he has watched to catch up with the years he has missed. Normal scientists do not work and live in some kind of headquarters secured by heavily guarded arms. The scientists who have found him work for the government which is why the government has not shown up yet to collect him. They never have had to; they always have had him.

“How do you win a trophy in absence?” Silver asks because in his time, one had to be present and fight for whatever award had been to be won.

“By finding a crappy internet café and sending the instructions on how to unfreeze a man who has been in the ice for four hundred years to her colleagues,” Gildarts grins and not for the first time, Silver realises that this time and age is completely crazy and that he has to learn to swim in this water or he will drown.

“Doesn’t sound too difficult,” he replies as he remembers how many signs reading ‘internet café’ he has seen during his walks through the town that is supposed to be the same capital as it has been all these years ago.

“Well, she was in barely populated lands so it was quite the challenge – I bet you that she’ll file for an extension of the governmental internet project,” the redhead says with yet another shrug before he salutes and disappears.

* * *

**1**

* * *

There is no marching band playing as she gets out of the taxi and waves at the security guard at the entrance to the facility before dodging the all-too-curious glances from one of the other scientists she has been fighting with for the better part of the career. Hurrying up the stairs, she makes it nearly to her room before the music does get to her and she sighs inwardly. It is such a silly tradition in her opinion that they always play the award-winning scientist’s favourite song upon their return to the building but at the same time, she is grinning widely because it feels great to be home again.

“Nice try on getting away, Ur,” Layla chuckles from her place next to Gildarts who is holding up the music player and for a moment, Ur remembers why she always comes home after her long solitary journeys – because home is where her friends are. And there are not many people who are willed to make fools out of themselves just to live up to the most cliché movie moment ever.

“It’s a pleasure to be home,” she says with a bow before she finally rids herself off her gloves and flinches because her timer is so close to running out. “Layla, Gildarts _– Ivan_ ,” she adds as she tilts her head and sees the historian lurking on the stairs above her, a rather smug expression on his face once again.

“You’ve missed the sudden surge of popularity we got after getting the guy out of the ice,” Layla says with a grin before she takes the bag away from Ur and hugs her tightly. “Now, go and take a look at it yourself – you got to be curious.”

“Well, as curious as anyone would be about meeting a four hundred year old man,” the scientist says drily before she waves and straightens up, making her way to another part of the building.

* * *

**0**

* * *

It is much like on his first day, he decides as he sits in the chair by the window and looks outside into the snow and towards the main gate of the facility where a bunch of reporters seems to be waiting for somebody, just like they have done it when he has just woken up from the longest nap anyone had ever taken.

Only that he knows from what Ivan has muttered before disappearing silently as always, they are waiting in vain because the one they are waiting for has long snuck into through another entrance.

“Vultures, I swear, _vultures_ ,” Cornelia – the cheerful soul mate of the red-haired scientist and _finally_ a medical doctor – mutters as she hands him his schedule and vanishes.

And although it is a rather silent day at the facility, Silver hears the sound of heels on the wooden floor in the hallways from far away. The sound is a steady beat, much like the way his heart beats against his ribcage and as he looks down at his wrist and pushes his watch aside, he realises that his soul mate’s arrival in his life was imminent – and he is not sure if he should try to run or if he should sit still and just let it happen.

(In the end, nobody can successfully outrun their fate and he knows that he will not be the first to try.)

Then, the door is opened and he looks over his shoulder and he does not need to have to check to know that his counter has hit zero. He has read books describing this moment and he has to say that he is somewhat disappointed because it does not feel like the universe has just fallen into place and revealed the great truth.

The woman in the doorframe looks at him with the most analytical gaze he has seen on anyone so far for a moment before she nods and takes a step into the room, closing the door behind her before she moves over to the mini refrigerator where Layla keeps her chocolate and takes out a bottle of juice.

Drinking it, she sighs. “I always get so dehydrated when I fly,” she explains and then, she halts and looks down at her wrist, her facial expression _derailing_ for a moment as she stares at it.

“Hit zero?” he asks although he knows the answer already. After all, his clock has hit zero the very moment he has turned his head to look at her – and there is no such thing as _mismatched clocks_ after all. His original assumption that his clock might have been broken has been stomped on when he has woken up in a brave new world, less than a year away from meeting his soul mate. Ever since, he has agreed with the common belief that clocks – they are called timers, now – are infallible.

“It’s unbecoming to ask questions you already know the answer to,” she replies as she brushes back a strand of her short black hair before she grins – a bit uneasy but still somewhat smug – and although her eyes are no kaleidoscopes revealing a deeper meaning of life to him, their gleam is surely entrancing.

“It’s also unbecoming not to introduce oneself upon meeting another,” he says as he raises his eyebrow at her.

“Please, you’ve heard about me,” she shrugs as she rolls her eyes. “Snow White’s murderous twin … the ice queen … that’s me,” the woman interrupts herself for a brief moment and cracks the little finger of her left hand with a ferocity that nearly makes it look like she wants to break the bone. “Doctor Ur Frost,” she finally sighs.

“I’m Silver,” he says and holds out his hand to her.


	13. deconstruction of a kingdom ;; sherry blendy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **ѕυrvιvor** , noun  
> 1\. a person or thing that survives.  
> 2\. _Law._ the one of two or more designated persons, as joint tenants or others having a joint interest, who outlives the other or others.  
>  3\. a person who continues to function or prosper in spite of opposition, hardship, or setbacks

The first cruel lesson life teaches her when she is five and her father tells her that she will not have a little brother anytime soon, pats her hair and reminds her that sometimes, the princess has to slay her dragon herself because there is no knight at hand who can do this.

It takes her years to realise what he really means but in the end, she is grateful because when her father has trusted her to handle herself, how can she despair? Her father knows her best, after all and she prays that she can find a way to slay all the dragons in her way because she wants a happy ending so desperately – because this is what she deserves.

She is six-nearly-seven when she starts to run.

(She never stops afterwards.)

As long as she runs, everything around her is alright because it cannot touch her, cannot catch up with her. She runs all her life, either away from ghosts of the past she does not want to deal with or towards goals that promise some kind of peace, even if it is just temporary.

She is fast, fast enough to outrun a demon, fast enough to outrun the death that has come to claim her the way it has taken so many others she has loved – her parents, the shopkeeper from around the corner who always pats her hair and calls her pretty when she comes to get sweets, the teacher of her school –  _ **everyone**_.

There is blood, everywhere.  
There is fire, burning away the cold.  
There are screams, loud enough for her not to hear her own crying. [  
](http://empressblendy.tumblr.com/post/111871087281/dance-dance-dance-little-doll-and-never)

Once she is out of the town, she wants to stop running because she has to have brought enough distance between herself and the death of everyone she has ever known but her legs do not stop because something inside of her is irrevocably broken and how can she ever stop to run from death and destruction when it is everywhere?[  
](http://empressblendy.tumblr.com/post/111871087281/dance-dance-dance-little-doll-and-never)

The day her life goes up in flames, she stops believing in happy endings.  
They cannot exist in a world like this.

But she is alive and this is, against what she thinks at first, something that sets her apart. People older than her have perished. People stronger than her are gone.  
But she has remained.  
Death has brushed past her, has perhaps not deemed her worth of his time that night – and she is going to make him regret this because never again will she depend on someone else, never again will anyone have control about her.

She is young but she knows that if she is not going to take charge, she will regret it later because she will inevitably be forced to play a part that has never been hers to play and she remembers far too well how her mother has taught her that in the end, everyone has a choice.

Everyone does include a little girl who has no idea how hard life can be.

To survive seems to be her inherent skill or so some of the mages in the guild she stumbles across mutter and she is inclined to agree.

Her resolve growing firmer by the day, she weathers the lessons life continues to throw at her and learns that sometimes, it does not matter how much something hurts once it is gone because if it has been loved, it will remain forever. The words do not just stick with her, she begins to build her entire life around the ideal of love. She wants to love, she wants to keep everything in her heart forever – because the way her parents’ smile fades from her memory unsettles her because she wants to remember the good times because there is no way she will ever be able to forget the day her childhood paradise has been turned into nothing short of a hell, the day her blissful ignorance to the true terrors of the world has been ripped away from her, the day her eyes have been forced open.

She is thirteen and she still runs.

She wears heels now  
(all to slow herself down, no one can know that she is still on the run)  
and her words are easily coated in venom because as a survivor, she is a dangerous one. And frankly, surviving is not enough, not when the world out there is far more dangerous than she has ever been able to imagine when she has been a child, listening to her mother’s stories of princesses and knights or her father’s tales of people who are the same as she is:

                                                                                    a   _ **ｓｕｒｖｉｖｏｒ**_.

(She is thirteen when she starts to own the term survivor with the same confidence as the earth mage she relies on so much who calls himself a protector.)

She has long surrendered her gentleness because if she wants to get justice for the wrongs that have been done to her and everyone she has loved as a child, she has to be sharper than a knife and she needs a mind both rational and capable of manipulation.  
This is what is required on their quest to take revenge and whatever is needed, she delivers because inside her chest burns a dark fire just as hot as the fires that have, many years ago, swallowed her hometown whole.

(And she has not forgotten.)  
(And she has not forgiven.)

She has left Lamia Scale but she has kept her fangs.

But her fangs fail to poison the fairy in time and she loses and for the first time in a very long time, she notes something down as a failure – and she has not failed in many years, has not allowed herself to because her love means to live with all her might, to live for those who are long gone but not forgotten. 

But she gets back up and straightens her clothes before deciding that this has been a fluke, that there is no way that the blonde is truly out of her league – she is the one with the experience and the burden of being the one to survive while the other knows nothing about having to run from the roar of the demon, about having to mourn parents without having a grave to go do, without a picture to remember them by.

She spats out the bitter taste of blood and goes back to fighting because this is what she knows best at this point.

Surviving is her top priority, at seventeen.

Followed by her desperate wish for others to please, please, please survive as well because she does not want to add to the far-too-long list of people she has lost along her way. She does not want for another person to become a fading memory in the back of her mind while she soldiers on and on and on because this is something she can do, no matter how many times she has fallen down already.

Nirvana ruins her pattern of marching, falling, getting back up, recovering and going back to the start because it cuts in while she is still recovering.

And for the first time in тєη long years, she feels truly powerless again.

That day, she survives and loses.

Another wins and this is the side people will hear about, the side everyone thinks about when they say how lucky they were, forgetting that there has been someone who has paid the price for everything, that there is someone who is still paying for everything many years later. 

It is the day the princess cannot save herself and there is still no knight in sight for her.


	14. it’s the wrong kind of place (to be thinking of you) ;; silvur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a graveyard in her chest and he wonders how long he has until she buries him there forever, right next to herself.

The most problematic aspect of his current situation was that he had neither a clue how he had ended up in the cell nor could he know for sure if his invented life would withstand someone poking it while looking for parts that did not add up. This was a problem all too common for him ever since he had left the realm he had called home more than two centuries ago. And while technology advanced, he had to hurry to stay ahead of everything.

It had been implied that he could get out the moment someone would pay for his release but after years as a travellers, friends who would be willed to bail him out had gotten rare and so he prepared himself for a long stay. And it could have been much worse, rather all. He had seen his fair share of cells over the course of his long life and this was certainly one of the nicer ones.

“Mr Fullbuster,” one of the officers said, opening the cell and letting him out. “You’re lucky; there’s a young lady ready to bail you out.”

He had never been good at making friends and so he had no idea who of the people he associated with these days had felt inclined to bail him out. Back in the days, it would have been his old friend who was in charge of destruction, usually on behest of their mutual friend. But the man who went by the name of Gildarts once again these days had not been seen around in quite some time and rumour had it that he was going to bury himself in the glory of his past soon enough.

And from the way the cop had put it, it was a woman who had stepped into the dirt of the precinct and this narrowed down the list of people who had come to his rescue. He had not been in town for long enough to make a mortal his temporary consort although this rarely took long – he was not quite as picky as others – and so the only option was that someone from his past had come to bail him out which would inevitably lead to a scolding.

He did hope that the mysterious saviour was not his daughter – this would be an embarrassment too big for him to bear. For all his shortcomings, his firstborn had always held a special spot in his heart and he did not wish for her to see him disgraced like this. Another option would be the goddess of love but she was said to be rather busy with fighting a battle against the loss of love in this time and age, making it unlikely that she would go out of her way just to get someone who had once been her father-in-law out of the mess he had gotten himself into.

But if the Fates had ever been kind to him, they had abandoned him a long time ago because rather than to send someone he could reason with, they had decided to reunite him with the woman he had loved for centuries but had not seen in two decades and this felt more than just a little odd to him, mostly because seeing her tore open the old wound her absence had left on him.

He had not remembered her actively in years, it had been the fleeting kind of memory – when the light had hit someone in the right angle to reveal a vague resemblance or when someone had been copying her standard drink in a bar. And so twenty years had passed and the absence of her in his life had become something he had gotten used to, mostly because it had been easy. They had never been the people to draw hearts into the sand, perhaps because they had gotten too old for this. They had never mourned the end of summer because they had been the ones who had laughed at the friends who had tried to be subtle by sneaking off.

They had been too old for things like this and at the same time, they had been young enough to enjoy the freedom of drifting across the world where no one cared where they came from and where they would leave to in the end of the long summer days.

He had enjoyed the long summers at the beaches all over the world because it had been the time of the year when they had been free to do as they pleased. And in the first summers after he had left their home, she had been there when he had settled down somewhere for the months of sunshine and warmth, had been sipping drinks right next to him, her dark hair matted by the salt in the water. But then, he had stopped going to the beaches, stopped going where she expected him to be. He had heard that she had waited for him for a year or two before she had decided that she had always been better off alone anyway.

“Hello there,” he said and for once, his voice shook because from the way she was dressed, he could tell that she had spent the day at the beach. For some reason, this hit a little too close to home because it had been their thing, back in the days when glory and fame had accompanied them wherever they went. The winter months had kept them busy but once summer came around, they had had time to laze around on white beaches, to dance with the inhabitants of charming towns until the sun went back up.

“You really make me feel like I’m getting too old for this,” she grumbled as she leaned against the counter, her hair reaching down to her hips which was an oddity, something he had never seen before – something he did not like much either but then, he had known her for half an eternity and he knew better than to comment on her choices although he was nearly convinced that it was because of some guy she fancied. It was not the first time that infuriation had turned her into a fool, it would not be the last time either.

And he was hardly the one to judge because he, too, had done crazy things for the love of a mortal – some cities were impossible for him to enter because he remembered all to well what kind of mark he had left on them along the centuries. And compared to waging war, letting the hair grow out was certainly the lesser problem.

After all, she was more than old enough to know that short hair had always suited her better; she did not need him or anyone else to remind her of this basic fact.

In the past, he had regretted to even consider that telling her that she should not do something because she had never taken lightly to his criticism, always reminding him of his own shortcomings which was something he did not need to be reminded of again and again.

“Too old?” he asked nonetheless, his lips quirking upwards because the idea seemed so odd. She had always been as young as him and as he did not feel old, she could impossibly be old.

“I had hoped that one day, I can let you go into this world without having to bail you out all the time,” she replied as she pushed herself off the counter, reaching for her hair and wrapping it twice around her hand before she bound it into a messy bun that vastly contradicted the glamour of her attire which indicated that she was tired of pretending to be someone she was not.

“You should’ve known better, darling,” he replied and had to hide his smirk as she threw him a nasty glare. No, she had never appreciated it when she had been addressed by anything but her name but as centuries had passed in a whirlwind around them, they had both had many names and by now, their original ones were impossible for them to pronounce.

(If they even still remembered which he doubted; he had always accepted whatever name she had used for him because they were cut from the same cloth and their souls were similar.)

(In the same manner, he had named her time and again, always picking short names to irk her.)

“I should’ve, indeed,” she replied as she held out her hand, her lips forming one of her rarest, most genuine smiles while he reached for the hand, kissing her knuckles briefly, all to soothe the storm that was masked well by her smooth façade and yet still visible to him.

“I most certainly missed your company,” he said as he released her hand and rested one hand against her cheek. The constant flow of time had brought so many new odd terms to label relationships and yet, there was still no term for them. Depending on who was concerned, they might be called ‘friends with benefits’ but in the past twenty years, neither of them had benefitted from the implied benefits. At the same time, they were certainly not exes because whatever they had always had, it had never been ended in any shape or form.

“Well, I would hope so,” she replied drily as she brushed dirt off his shoulders before she shifted her weight and sent a dazzling smile at the officer who was currently trying very hard not to look down her shirt, a task he was failing pathetically at, much to Silver’s entertainment.

“Can I interpret that as a _‘I missed you too and can’t wait to get my hands on you’_ , dear?” he asked with a half-smirk, knowing just too well that this comment would further irk her.

“Perhaps,” she said as she reached over the counter to place her signature on the file. He angled his head to figure out which name she was using lately, only to chuckle because it was an old one, one he had been used to in days of the past because it had been a time when they had been on excellent terms.

“I heard you’re mostly talk these days,” he shrugged and hoped that she would not ask who he had been in contact with because in this case, she was certain to go after people who had once been her friends, who had once been people she had trusted.

“I don’t think so,” she replied coolly and he remembered far too well what she could do if she was pushed far enough. After all, they went back further than recorded history and after all they had been through, he would have to be the biggest idiot on earth if he would not know her.

He sighed, nearly disappointed that she had not taken the bait. “You know, you used to be fun,” he said as he followed her out of the building and into the warm summer night.

“You got a place to stay?” she asked as she turned away from the parking lot and kept walking, the messy bun atop of her head slowly becoming undone and sending long locks down her back.

It was odd but so many centuries after their birth, she was still lovely and he mused if their constant attraction between them was a side effect of the fact that there had never been judgement between them or if it was because a part of him was gone when she was absent, especially since he could no longer count on her to return when winter came and they needed to rise. These days, she handled the divine work one year and he the next.

It was like, in a ridiculous way, they had split custody for their season.

But whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had gotten tired and while her eyes were still as dark and expressive as they had always been, they were eyes that had seen death and destruction a million times over and he knew that sooner or later, she would go back home because in the end, she had always loved people too much and watching them how they destroyed themselves and each other strained her patience more than she would ever admit. And she was tired, so very tired after centuries of watching over the world. Being a watcher, a guardian had taken more out of her than she would ever care to admit but he knew her too well to be fooled.

“I actually do, yes,” he said as he crossed his arms behind his back and followed her because it had been a long time since he had seen her and although he would never admit it without making a joke out of it in some way, it had always been nicer when she had been around as well and he had had someone around who could understand him, no matter what he was talking about.

“You are worrying me,” she said as she stopped all of a sudden and he nearly collided with her as she turned around, divine fury burning inside her eyes because she had been angry for a long time but had never cared to show it before for a reason or another. “We are immortal.”

“You know that we won’t live forever,” he replied drily because what everyone liked to forget was that there had been some of them who had not survived the battles of the past, who had fallen and never recovered – but no one ever talked about them anymore.

“Maybe I’ve had it with your recklessness,” she said quietly as she reached for the hair that was swaying in the wind, cutting it back to the old length without paying much attention to it. “You know I will always care … but you make it harder for me than it has to be.”

“You know that I don’t have to be like this, Ur,” he said and wondered how long it had been since they had been this honest with each other, how many years had passed when they had both hidden behind the people they were supposed to be rather than who they truly were. He knew that she had been tempted to call it quits more than once and that she had lingered still because she had always been meant to be his keeper, the one who ensured that he did not go too far.

“Then be someone else,” she said sharply as strands of black were carried away by the wind. “Be the person again I actually knew, the one I fought to the blood with, at the beginning of everything … this was a person I looked at and recognised … it gets difficult for me.”

“I wasn’t the one who has spent twenty years running from everyone and everything,” he replied sharply and for the first time in a millennia, she did not flinch back and he understood what had happened, understood that she had gone back to the start. Gone was the softer (weaker) version of her, back was the woman who had never let anyone push her around.

“That’s rich, really,” she said and the ice between her fingers started to gleam dangerously. “I came for you today … something I can’t say about you.”

“Nothing good ever came out of anyone rushing to your aid, Ur, because you hated it,” he replied and smirked as she scowled at him. “And you’re fine now.”

“I am now, yes,” she said with a grim expression on her face before she tilted her head backwards. “I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to dig up old bodies.”

“If that was really your stance, you wouldn’t be here,” he said and the glare he received made it painfully obvious that she had not wanted for him to comment on this – only that he was not stopped this easily. “Coming here will leave you with no choice but to dig some bodies back up.”

“You give yourself too little credit if you really think that we ever got around to bury, well, us,” she said as she started to walk again. “Now, say whatever you have to tell me.”

“For someone who’s reportedly humble and modest, you really like to assume that people have someone to tell you,” he said and he did not have to look at her to know that she was indignant as this, mostly because she knew fully well that he was aware of the simple fact that she would not be there unless something or someone had told her to go see him. He did believe in coincidences but to believe that his darling partner strolled into the very police station he had been brought to after twenty years without contact was something no one could sell to him.

“You know fully well that I don’t play your games,” she replied and he had to chuckle because this was true, she had never played along – unless she had wanted someone from him and planned to cross him anyway and playing along had been her way of making him feel like he was safe.

“I know that you never play when you can lose something that isn’t worth losing,” he replied with a shrug and although she was no longer an immortal _child_ , throwing a temper tantrum, the air around her did grow colder. “C’mon, don’t be a brat about this. You know how I meant it.”

“Well, I do apologise for feeling like there are some hills I don’t want to die on,” she scoffed as she threw him one of her nastiest glares before she pressed her lips together. “Met the archers.”

This explained a lot, namely the underlying vibe that she was in a horrid mood. Ur had never forgiven herself for not being able to keep her family close when this had been (all these years ago) something she had wished for from the bottom of her heart.

“How’s little Asuka doing?” he asked with a grin.

“You’re just awful,” she replied darkly as she looked up at the stars that were faint, nearly outshone by the lights of the city. “Really, Silver, you are the one who’s a brat right now.”

“Says something about you too, doesn’t it?” he grinned and she huffed before her elbow collided with his ribs and she smirked even smugger than usual, nearly as smug as him.

“I talked to the kids, only a while back,” she said as she stretched, her bones making odd noises as they returned into their ideal position. “We went to the sea together.”

“Did I miss the memo regarding our divorce or something? I didn’t get an invitation,” he replied with a frown that was nearly genuine for a change.

“First of all, you aren’t that funny and secondly, the last time we went on a family vacation, a war broke out,” she said as shook her shoes off her feet and picked them up, swinging her arms back and forth as she walked. “Also, I can’t remember ever marrying you, _darling.”_

“I guess that means I can forget ever introducing you as my dearest wife, my better half, the one who calls the shots,” he replied as he wiggled his eyebrows at her.

“Newsflash, I don’t have to be married to you or anyone else to call the shots,” she replied drily and he could not deny that she did have a point. Anyone else would have quit the position as matriarch of their messed-up family a millennia ago, when their daughter had started to date the god of sciences, mostly astronomy. Ever since this event, everything their family had gotten involved in had led to a fight among the deities and he had grown tired of it – and he had always had fun during the fights which was something that could not be said about most others. “Also,” she continued, “since when do you obsess about having a proper label for, well, us?”

“Just look at all the labels you can put on relationships these days … you can be friends with benefits and it’s more or less socially accepted. Gotta say, some of the changes in this century aren’t that bad,” he said and turned his head to look at her, unsurprised by her less than happy facial expression.

“You’re on pretty thin ice right now, Silver,” she warned quietly and her eyes gleamed dangerously. And this was the attitude he had missed, her (usually justified) idea that she was the one who knew better than anyone else. There had been events in the past that had proven her right and although her ego was no match for his, she still had her moments when it was difficult to look at her because she insisted in blinding everyone else with her gleam.

“Am I now?” he grinned at her. “Don’t make promises you don’t want to keep, dear.”

“If you ever refer to our stable relationship of more than two millennia and four children as to a _‘friends with benefit’_ arrangement, I will personally make sure you regret it,” she said and to underline her threat, she stepped onto his foot and while she was barefoot, she could easily summon icicles beneath her soles and this was exactly what she had decided to do.

“Eve isn’t really our kid,” he argued as he waited for his foot to heal again.

“We have been over this, more than once, Silver,” she said as she walked again and he knew that if he would reheat this particular argument, she would likely seal him away for a century or longer. Technically speaking, he was right. The snow god was not their child and yet, he had been associated with them by the mortals for an awful long time and after the fifth culture had named Ur the blond boy’s mother, she had decided to adopt him although the actual story of his origin was not even half as exciting as the story the mortals liked to tell.

“I never know if the insistence that he is family should amuse or worry me,” he shrugged although he knew that there was no reason to worry because as she was not the mother and the god of light was not the father, there was no reason to argue about the matter. Especially since he knew that her personal opinion on the likes of Sting was not exactly positive.

“You’re being a brat again,” Ur complained and this time, she sounded like she was truly upset.

“A brat that’s going to take you home so you can tell him all about your journeys while he makes you tea,” he replied and for a change, he decided that being domestic might be nice.

“Guess that I settled for a decent guy then,” she replied as she awkwardly angled her arm and waited for him to reach for it.

“Only that we all know that you don’t settle for anything ever,” he replied drily as he reached for her arm and gently led her down another street into the vague direction of his apartment.

“True,” she said with a nod and a proud smile crossed her face. “And you’ll make tea?”

“After so many years and three … and a half kids, you’re entitled to some tea, I guess.”

“How about a backrub?” she asked as she raised both eyebrows. “I travelled far for you.”

“Now you’re really pushing your luck,” he grumbled as he unlocked the door and let her enter.

“I paid good money to get you out of prison,” she said as she stopped on the first step of the stairs and turned before she pressed her hand against his cheek while her lips curled into a smile right before she leaned in, brushing her lips over his. The kiss – if it could be called so – was nearly chaste but after twenty years in a whirlwind where the women had warmer lips, the cold that radiated from her took him back a few centuries when everything had been easier, when they had been able to travel together without fighting over everything after a few weeks.

Before the Archers had had the reputation of having the happiest relationship, it had been them.

“Your true motives are showing,” he said with a wink as she pulled back and turned back around.

“You make me sound like some criminal,” she said as she rolled her eyes at him and extended her hand, the sleeve of her dress sliding upwards. Back in the good old days, he had playfully scolded her for carrying spring under her skin. As they both claimed everything winter let wither away, it had been all too easy for her to let the flowers the ice and snow killed bloom under her skin and this had been both lovely and dangerous.

He laughed under his breath while he fumbled around with his keys. She had been accused of being unfunny a million times but he had never agreed because she always managed to get some laughter out of him, mostly by accident. “Guess there was a reason why I’ve carried a torch for you for so many years,” he shrugged.

“You make me regret getting you out of prison,” she grumbled as she followed him into his dark but thankfully not messy apartment, dropping off her shoes and her bag by the door as she strolled into his home like she owned the place – it was fascinating.

“Depending on how much you regret it, you could always try to tie me up again,” he said as he wiggled his eyebrows at her, highly amused by the sudden redness of her cheeks.

“Last time I immobilised you, it was when I sealed you away for ten years and – I don’t feel the urge to go back there,” she said drily as she pushed up the sleeves of her dress and sat down on his couch, limbs folded neatly around her. Even in the artificial light in his apartment, her eyes were bright and shone with the sights of uncounted years while her skin was blooming still. “So you’re safe … from me at least.”

“Too kind, as always,” he said drily and she reached for one of his books and flung it at him.

“Don’t need you being a brat; just came back from spending time with the kids,” she said darkly as she smiled at him, her stance more relaxed for a change.

“You’re an awful wife, rubbing it in that I wasn’t invited,” he said as he busied himself in the kitchen area of his apartment, preparing the tea he had promised her.

“First, not your wife, second, you wouldn’t have come anyway,” she scoffed but there was a barely concealed darkness in her eyes. She might kid around and act like it did not strain her patience but he knew better, had seen the expression on her face.

“Judging from the way you insist on the not your wife part, I assume that someone brought it up with you.” He was not stupid, he knew how she behaved when something had gotten under her skin in a bad way, knew it from the way she was sharper and colder than usual.

“Aquarius,” she grumbled as she opened the box with cookies and took one.

“I always felt like your sister got involved in things that were none of her business,” he shrugged as he threw the teabag into the cup and poured the boiling water over it although he could hear Lyon’s hissed protest – _“That’s not the proper way!” –_ even though the boy was not even in the country at the moment.

 _“My sister?”_ Ur asked, a dark eyebrow forming a graceful arc over an equally dark eye.

“She can’t be mine,” he argued and rather than to remind him – not for the first time – that neither of them had siblings or parents, she rested her palms on the table as she laughed.

“Happy to see that I’m still funny,” he replied as he rolled his eyes and placed the cup in front of her, slumping down on the chair on the other side of the table. “So what now?”

“I’m tired enough to run for goddess of sleep,” she admitted as she stared into the cup, her face still carrying the last traces of her laughter. “So I need some rest before I travel back home.”

He exhaled before he reached for a cookie himself. It was irresponsible but, if it would fail, he could always blame it on the alcohol that was still in the system, the same alcohol that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. “Or, you know, you could stay for a while,” he offered.

“If I stay, there’ll be expectations,” she said slowly as regret blossomed on her face.

“You know, if you’d just say what you want, chances are that I’d be up for the challenge,” he said although he knew her too well to believe that she would actually voice any wishes.

“Right now? This cup of tea and a spot to sleep – and actually, I quite like this couch,” she added as an afterthought as she reached for the light blanket he had thrown over the couch to make it look nicer.

And while this was worlds away from what he had expected to hear, he knew her and he was confident that he could figure out the rest soon enough – and maybe, they would get to walk alongside the ocean’s shore before long. After all, they would deserve it more than anyone else.


	15. the lines keep getting thinner ;; silvur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **It’s a long way back to the top after you hit the bottom so long ago.**  
>  No one ever asked for this au but you still get it.

**10.**  

To be honest, Silver Holm had seen this coming from far away. He had known that sooner or later, they would have to face that he had not been the same since the day he did not want to think about and while it had gotten better, he was no longer the same and before he could say that he loved someone else, he had to get to know himself again. He had soldiered on for three years, had denied that he no longer knew the man in the mirror but in the end, his lies had always fallen short when he had looked at her.

But as long as he looked into the mirror and did not recognise the person he was looking at, he had to figure himself out before he could say that he loved someone else. After all, he was known as a fair man and there was nothing fair about keeping a woman close while being unable to love her the way she deserved to be loved.

And so he had swallowed his pride and said goodbye, had ignored that she had told him to stay, had ignored her promise that they could work it out because she was not that great a liar and there was no way for him to believe her when her voice was shaking and she sounded like a child, asking for the permission to keep a security blanket. He had known that she would be better off without him. Better off without someone who kept waking up in the middle of night and felt like he was under attack. Better without someone who sometimes grabbed her too hard after a nightmare and left marks on her skin, marks she had to explain to friends and co-workers.

She was a damn good field agent and to him, knowing that she could go back to saving the world was consolation because the world needed people like her. The world needed people who could listen, people who understood that sometimes, it was necessary to do a bad thing for a good cause. This was why she handled the best sniper known to mankind, this was why she had been his wife for five years before things had gone sour and he had had to prioritise her safety over their happiness, hoping that she would understand him one day.

But a day like this seemed to be still far and while he was patient, he could not help but wonder if they would ever cross paths again in the first place. She had been avoiding him and he was not even sure if she had done it on purpose or because their schedules were no longer matching. The closest they had come to meeting in the past three years had been when he had arrived in Budapest two hours after she had left to clean up the mess her team had made. And as long as they did not end up in the same place, there was no way for them to just talk about random things because calling her to tell her that he had read her report about the latest mission of Strike Team Delta and was now wondering if she was fine after her account of the assignment included lines like _“at this point, the handler was forced to abandon the supposedly secure location as the aforementioned location was now in the Thames”_ and _“the handler recommends to never send the team to London ever again (here’s to hoping the British government will forgive us in the first place)”_.

He was not sure if his ex-wife knew that he was the one who read her reports and made them funny for this very reason or if she had never written reports in another way.

But while her reports ended up frequently on his desk, he did not see her at all. She was off ensuring the safety of their country with her team and from the list of expenses she kept handing in along with her reports, they were living quite the glamorous life which sadly made sense as their _clientele_ was doing exactly the same and so no one flinched when Ur filed requests for expensive fashion or informed the budget department that her team would stay at a luxurious hotel.

If anything, people questioned why on earth Director Clive let her do this kind of thing before they remembered that whenever Agent Frost had wanted something, the director had permitted it because they were old friends and former partners which explained the favouritism.

But Silver did not mind it quite as much as others did because it meant that she was safe and her safety had always been a top priority of his – after all, it was the reason why they were divorced.

It was for the best of everyone if he stayed far, far away from her – and this was why he groaned when he got the call that informed him that he had to abandon his safe job behind a desk, a job so boring that he did not further agitate his old wounds, because the stupid Tesseract thing he was not even supposed to know about had been stolen and Hawkeye had been compromised.

The last detail was what annoyed him.

Agent Lyon Vastia, better known under his alias, was one of the few people Ur would not let down, even if it meant to get herself into danger because whenever she prioritised, she put the lives of her close friends and subordinates over her own. This meant that she would – if necessary – pull rank on whoever was in charge aside from the director and his second-in-command. Silver knew his ex-wife and the last time they had both been called in during a Level Seven emergency, she had been the one who had dealt with the most complicated aspects.

Frankly, Silver Holm was not keen on being woken up in the middle of night to hear that the world might be taken over by an Asgardian tyrant and that said tyrant had already started to mess with someone Silver still cared about enough for him to get some clothes and hurry to the place where he was apparently needed this time.

It was rare for the director to announce a Level Seven but when it happened, it followed always the same protocol. All high-ranking agents were called in, always into the same place – which was a strategic disadvantage as basically everyone knew because it made them rather vulnerable – before the director told them what they had to do. In some cases, consultants were also summoned but this had not happened much lately.

This time, however, they were called in and so Silver was sharing his quinjet to the helicarrier with Agent Blendy – the Black Widow – and Doctor Minerva Orland who had a rather interesting second personality, the Hulk. The atmosphere between the women was tense but perhaps this was mostly because it was Blendy’s partner who had been compromised.

“I start to think that Clive only calls me in when he has to,” Silver muttered under his breath as he crossed his arms, his eyes never leaving the former Russian spy. Between the two women, he would rather take his chances with the doctor than to leave the Widow out of his sight.

“It’s like every other Level Seven before,” the woman replied as she drummed a nervous rhythm against her forearm where some weapon had to be hidden, knowing her.

“It’s not your first rodeo then?” he asked as he raised his eyebrows. The not-so-well-known truth about Silver Holm was that he was as much of a native speaker when it came to English as his ex-wife or his Widow herself. But since it would be problematic for him not to speak English to a point where he could fool any native speaker into thinking he was one of them, he had studied the language extensively. After all, he liked being the best at his job.

Even though being able to imitate nine different accents was arguable more valuable while working out on the field but this was a detail he did not like to think about.

“ _Hardly_ ,” the woman scoffed. “Level Six’ is what we usually deal with.”

Silver had yet to figure out how Ur managed to deal with people who were that different from her but she had always managed to get people who were nothing like her to see her point. After all, he had usually listened to her in the rare cases they had been on the same mission because she had always had a different angle and usually, it had worked out in his favour. But this did not explain why she was still the handler of the perhaps most complicated agents S.H.I.E.L.D. had at the moment. Originally, it had been supposed to be a temporary solution but then, no one had wanted to tear apart a working team.

(Never change a winning team, as sport experts would say.)

“Let’s hope it doesn’t go up to Level Eight,” he replied and wondered when exactly the agency had declared such a high level. He was sure that there had been an event, somewhere in the history books but he did not remember the precise circumstances, only that he had thought that he would hopefully never get involved in such a mess because this was where agents died, no matter how well-prepared that had been for the incident.

“Agent Frost will be there, too,” the younger agent said with a smile that might have been interpreted as friendly or caring if it had been on someone else’s face.

But rather than to take the bait, Silver nodded slightly. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else, Agent Blendy,” he replied with a tiny smirk because if she wanted to play, he was more than skilled enough to meet her on even grounds. “She’s a very good agent after all.”

“And no risk for her to fall into the Thames, this time,” she replied in a faux-cheerful tone.

This was the truth: Silver did not get why the Black Widow was trying to get him to say something about his ex-wife for nearly ten minutes because he was looking for a motivation in the wrong places. The assassin and spy was not trying to rile him up, she was trying to figure out how he would react in case that his path and Ur’s path would cross. Where Silver had been looking for malicious intention, it was a subordinate looking out for her superior which was, in a way, nearly admirable.

But the Widow was not the only one who could play her cards right and Silver threw her a dazzling smile – one Ur had called _creepy as hell_ – before he crossed his arms behind his head, two fingers on the knife he kept hidden in his sleeve because he knew when he was trading on thin ice. “Worried for Hawkeye?” he asked as he wiggled his eyebrows at her. The implication was glare and considering that she glared at him, she knew it too.

“He is my partner, I’d prefer for him to be fine, obviously,” she replied and her voice was so cold that he raised an eyebrow at it; Ur had certainly rubbed off on her. Blendy might not be willed to admit it but she worried far more for her partner than she let show and this was her good right – and probably wiser, too.

It was smarter for any agent to keep personal affections hidden – this was why so many of them never settled down. When Silver had been younger, he had figured that he would never get married because it would be a weakness. He had long planned to become a specialist at the time and this meant to go where the danger was everywhere and he was not the kind of asshole to make someone wait for him again and again. But then, he had been teamed up with the _other Danish agent_ and things had gone downhill pretty fast.

Because things had ended with pain and part of the reason why he had asked to be transferred to the other side of the country was that coming home to an apartment that was empty in a different way from what he had been used to had been painful in the end. All had been gone and the only thing he had had left had been his memories but they did not help much when he had no longer been able to be in the same room as Ur without feeling guilty for hurting her – in more than one way. But he had had no choice because if he had stayed, he might have killed her on accident and rather than to risk this, he had ended things with her.

* * *

**9.**

Against what seemed to be the popular opinion on her, Ur Frost considered herself to be a loser. She was one of the most renowned agents, some called her the tamer because she was in charge of Strike Team Delta which meant Lyon Vastia who often went off-book and Sherry Blendy who had gotten better but sometimes still flinched at things most people would not flinch at.

(It had been a moment of defining importance had been when the Black Widow had handed her the handcuffs she had borrowed at the beginning without an explanation.)

But while she was constantly winning when it came to her professional life, her private life had been an uphill battle for years now. She was not the kind to complain about everything but she could not deny that it frustrated her that her both subordinates who had been put through hell more than once were adjusting better to life outside of work than her. A traitorous voice whispered that it was because neither of them clung to something (someone) that (who) was part of the past and could never be recovered.

They embraced the future, she was stuck in the past.

Nonetheless, this did not change that her biggest worry in the current situation was not that one of her agents had been compromised but what effect this would have on the other because long before Sherry Blendy had trusted S.H.I.E.L.D., she had trusted Lyon Vastia and this made a difference. And Ur was too experienced to underestimate details like this – after all, she had aced all classes on observation and analysis back in her academy days.

Observation and analysis was what had alerted her to the presence of her ex-husband on the helicarrier, too, but this was an unbidden thought because she had a job to do and she was not certain if she could do this while she knew that Silver was keeping an eye on the situation.

On the other hand, she had always aimed to do her very best when someone she cared about was watching and this was only further motivation for her to give her best and to get her agent out of the mess he had been dragged into, preferably before anyone would give out the order to terminate the threat because there was no way she would stand for such an order, especially not when she knew that the person what would be send after Lyon was Sherry and she also knew that Sherry still felt like she owed Lyon although he had been trying to convince her of the opposite more than once before.

Ur had known how much her team cared about one another ever since Budapest when Lyon – god, calling him Agent Vastia while they were on duty seemed so odd since they had often spent Christmas together – had thrown away an assignment to save the life of his partner. She knew that the director had been less than happy about this but she had always made it clear that the team came first. It had taken her a while to figure out a good match for the bird boy and she was not going back to the days when she had gone to the academies again and again to read reports about junior agents who were rumoured to be good enough to keep up with her charge.

But right now, she did not want to think about this because Sherry was cowering on the ground, her fingers hovering over the screen that was displaying what little information they had on Lyon’s current position and no one had to tell Ur that Sherry understood what was happening because she had been there when they had worked through the Widow’s programming, she had been there all along the way.

Next to her, Captain America – ‘ _call me Jellal, ma’am’_ – was clearing his throat and she turned her head, raising an eyebrow at the super soldier. “They say,” he started and she sighed inwardly, “that Agent Blendy and … one of the missing agents we- _are_ close.”

“They are partners,” she replied as she looked around in the room, her lips pressed into a thin line because she had been discussing this a million times before with countless agents. She knew that calling them partners meant to eclipse their friendship but she did not have to be a mind reader to know that this was not what the captain had meant to imply in the first place. But she had ever followed the policy of not asking about what exactly the relationship between her agents was, mostly because this way, her hands were clean in case that everything went south.

There was more than enough pressure on them and on her – and she was not going to ever get involved in a mess labelled with ‘fraternisation’ ever again because the one time it had happened before in her life was something she would never forget. Mostly because people had never let her forget about it which had been rather rude of them in her opinion.

“If I may, ma’am, I worry about her,” the Captain continued and she sighed inwardly because he was not the first who had questioned her decision to call the Widow back in.

“I will let you in on a secret, Captain,” she said as she patted his shoulder, making her hand as heavy as she could to transport how serious she was. “Keeping her away would have been a bad call – and I can’t remember making any bad calls in the last, say, twelve years.”

She did not want to go into detail what her last bad call had been – namely, ever accepting the position as the director’s second-in-command – but it did not seem like the captain would ask.

“Agent Frost,” Commander Mikazuchi said calmly as she approached, her dark hair swinging back and forth as it was free from the usual hair band which had been borrowed by Gajeel Redfox aka Iron Man for ‘science’ purposes. In fact, Ur was rather sure that it had been a prank.

“Mikazuchi,” Ur replied as she inclined her head at the younger woman, a thin smile in place. They did go back a long time – Ur had been the other woman’s supervising officer for a while – and as far as the rumour mill was concerned, neither of them had ever forgiven for surrendering the position of second-in-command and filling up the empty spot respectively. To Ur, most of this was nonsense and whatever grudge she might have held once was long gone but she was not sure if the same went for the other woman.

“Did you brief Doctor Orland yet?” the other asked sharply.

“Didn’t know that was my job,” she replied as she nodded briefly at the Captain before she moved away from them. Passing her present subordinate, she halted briefly and when the Widow looked over her shoulder, she nodded and the younger woman got up and followed her.

“Anything about Orland the reports won’t tell me?” she asked quietly as they moved through the hallways, sidestepping other agents while moving to the laboratory that had been set up.

“She seems a bit tired, looks like she needs some warm meals and sleep,” the spy replied with a shrug before a thin smile found its way to her face, the first since Lyon had been taken. “Don’t offer her one though; she won’t trust you,” she added as an afterthought.

“Implying that I don’t got my maternal instincts under control?”

“Implying that the doctor is probably the kind of stray you would take in,” the Widow replied drily before her eyes twinkled and she bowed her head, _“ma’am.”_

Sherry was a good actress, one of the best, and if Ur had not been working with her for years, she might have been deceived but she had seen the Widow at work too many times to fall for it. Sherry did not make jokes in dire situations; _Lyon_ did. And so she sighed before she looked at the younger woman and carefully extended her hand, patting her shoulder. “You don’t have to be Lyon too,” she said slowly, choosing her words carefully. “You are enough on your own.”

For a moment, the other woman was silent before she dropped her act. “I just hope he’s going to be fine,” she said and Ur’s heart warmed at the words because years ago when Lyon had brought her in, the woman would never have admitted that she cared about someone aside from herself. After all, she had been taught that caring was a weakness and she was not weak.

“We will get him back,” Ur promised although she knew that she was on thin ice; there was no way she could know for sure that Lyon would be still fine at the end of everything. “And I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable but … if you’re up to it, hold a chat with our Asgardian _guest_ … I don’t like the way he has been acting so far.”

A prisoner that was not nervous at all was no prisoner in her opinion. Someone had mentioned that it seemed like Jose – the name made her skin crawl like nothing before – was the only person on the ship that wanted to be there and it made her worry that this seemed to be accurate. Of course, there had been Gildarts’ threat but this could not be the only reason why the demigod had not tried to escape yet. No, there was no doubt on her mind; he wanted to be there and this was why he had tried nothing so far.

“I’ll see what I can get out of him,” Sherry promised as she turned to leave but against better knowledge, Ur reached out and stopped her for a moment, looking at her before she sighed.

“I don’t have to tell you this but – do nothing you’re uncomfortable with,” she said. This was something she always said before sending the Black Widow out on a mission and most of the time, the reply was that there was nothing she was uncomfortable with which was inaccurate. Sherry might have less inhabitations than most agents but she was a human being and Ur never failed to acknowledge her limits and to remind the other agent of them because the last thing she wanted was to be a bad handler.

“You know that I never do anything I don’t want to do,” the pink-haired woman replied and Ur sighed inwardly because this was a lie. It had taken her years to get the mindset that each order was absolute out of the former Russian’s head but even so, Sherry did not like to fail and this meant that she always pushed herself farther than Ur wanted her to.

“You aren’t a good liar,” Ur said as she shook her head. Of course, technically speaking, Sherry was the best liar S.H.I.E.L.D. had to offer, she was the one who tested lie detectors – and usually beat them all – but Ur knew her too well after all the years they had been working together and she no longer fell for the easy lies, the lies where Sherry did not mind being caught.

“Still better than you,” the Black Widow replied as she disappeared in the depths of the ship.

And this was something Ur could not argue with.

* * *

**8.**

He did not belong onto the helicarrier but he had been asked to oversee the interactions between the people the director wanted to form a team – he did know about the Avenger Initiative because he was observant – and so he followed orders. Standing in the locked and secure room, he watched how the Black Widow fought her partner somewhere in the depths of the large airship and then, his heart stopped.

He had known that Ur would be there because she had observed early stages of the project. She was in charge of Hawkeye and the Widow, she had talked to Iron Man. There had never been a single trace of doubt for him that Ur would be on the helicarrier as well – but he had avoided her company on purpose and he had not looked for her.

Now, she was forcing him to look at her because she had gotten her hands on one of the prototypes and in true Ur fashion, she had decided to confront the Asgardian man, the self-proclaimed conqueror on her own.

A part of him wanted to scream but another acknowledged that he was doomed to be silent while he did not avert his gaze.

It had been a long time since they had been in the same room without things getting awkward sooner or later but this did not mean that it did not hurt as the sceptre was stabbed through her chest. His legs gave in under him and a scream escaped him, quickly causing his throat to explode in pain because he had not screamed like this since the day he had had to watch how a bomb had torn apart what little family he had still had at the time.

Now, he watched how the woman he loved fell and he desperately wished that he could be there. He had never wanted to hold someone’s hand while they died but he did not want to be cursed to stand in the only secure room on the entire vehicle while his ex-wife muttered her last words, defiance still shining in her eyes. He did not want to be down there with her because it would have been romantic. He wanted to be there because the one day he had fallen apart, she had been there for him and now, he could not do the same for her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he wiped away stray tears, his heart burning in his chest because while he had known that matters had been difficult between them, he had never stopped wishing for a day when they would get around to fix this, when they could talk it over.

If things had gone the way they had supposed to be, they could have put their demons to rest years ago. She could have kept travelling the world with her team, proudly watching over them while they got themselves into trouble and she had to step in. If things had gone as planned, he could have dropped out of the specialist squad before Bahrain had ever happened and switched over to field work, perhaps even joining her team as additional backup.

(He had thought that he had gotten to old for all the specialist shit even before Bahrain had happened and everything had suddenly turned so much darker.)

He wanted to look away from the screens because he was looking at a disaster in the making and that the Widow had overwhelmed her partner without killing him was no consolation at all because he was not the only one who had lost someone; Hawkeye had lost the one who had held out a hand to him when he had hit the bottom of everything and the Black Widow could no longer count on having someone within the agency who would cover up the messes that sometimes happened when a woman with a more than difficult past was on a mission. They had lost family, just like he had lost someone he had still considered very important after everything.

He was strangely relieved when the director reached Ur before she passed out forever. They had been old friends and former partners; she had even been his second-in-command before they had fought and she had quit the position, opening the spot for Mikazuchi. He was relieved because Ur was not the person he had ever wanted to die alone, far away from her friends. And the director needed the chance to apologise because he had been the one to drag her into this flying circus, the circus that was now turning into a slaughter bank for people and bonds everyone had thought to be untouchable.

With Agent Frost dead and Strike Team Delta trading blows with intent to kill on one side, S.H.I.E.L.D. had already lost something extraordinarily valuable to them. Silver had lost someone he had never wanted to lose and the idea that while she was taking her last, shaky breath, her subordinates were falling apart at the seams hurt him. This was not the greater cause she had wanted to give her life for, this was a disaster unfolding and he was unsure on how to react.

He could not be the inspiring leader Vastia would need if he survived the fight against his partner. He did not have the right words that would make Blendy see that while she had failed to keep her handler safe, no one blamed her for this because she had given her best to safe someone else and that her handler would have wanted it exactly like this.

But he could be the one to deliver the news because they might take it better when it came from him because he was someone who had known their late handler and not just some official in a hurry, delivering more and more bad news without showing the empathy that would be needed.

He straightened up and smoothed the wrinkles of his jacket before he opened the door. The sounds of fighting had stopped and it was frightfully silent everywhere. A part of him wondered how many agents aside from Ur had lost their lives but then, he pushed the thoughts aside and made his way to the detention level which was where, according to the messages from the speakers, the Black Widow was keeping her partner.

Thankfully, this meant that they did not know it yet, that they were safe for now.

He exhaled deeply before he stepped into the room and scanned it for a moment. The Widow was sitting on a bench, her head buried in her hands while her partner was sitting on the chair, shackles hanging from the chair’s leans without being attached to his limbs. The silence inside the room was heavy but not heavy enough to crush someone. He knew this kind of silence and he knew what it meant – that for the first time in years, they did not know what to say. He was nearly convinced that they knew already and that he was only confirming it for them but this did not make it any less complicated.

“Agents,” he said as he closed the door behind him and leaned against it. He had never understood how Ur had been able to turn her back at them, at the woman who had so much red in her ledger that it seemed nearly impossible for her to ever wipe it out and at the man who could hit any target because he had a certain gift.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Vastia asked, his voice rough and nearly accusing looked at his partner who pointedly ignored his stare. “Oh good god, _what have I done?”_

“You didn’t kill her,” Silver replied calmly as he wondered how horrible these news had to be for the sniper who had once mentioned that as long as he could keep his colleagues safe, he would no longer count the wrongs he had done before. For him, it had to be a disaster.

The Widow shifted slowly and Silver saw the glint of a knife that was pushed back into her sleeve before she straightened up, throwing her partner a sad glance before she cleared her throat. “…is it true?” she whispered and once again, the former specialist was reminded of how young the woman had been when Vastia had brought her in and how young she was still. He did not doubt that – whether it had been acknowledged or not – there had been some kind of familiar affection between the woman who had always remained calm and the woman who had killed countless people.

“I am sorry,” he repeated but he knew that the word could impossibly contain the full range of emotion he felt about the loss they had all suffered. “Just figured it’d be easier coming from me.”

Vastia rose and stepped into the adjacent bathroom and the next thing Silver heard was the sound of a mirror being crushed under a fist. The Widow did not flinch but she was on her feet moments later, hurrying to her partner’s side and muttering something too low for Silver to understand. A moment later, she appeared in the door again and smiled thinly.

“I’ll handle this, Agent Holm,” she promised but there seemed to be something else in it. Silver had always felt like it would be too easy to just say that the duo was in love with one another but at the same time, he had never been able to deny this glaringly obvious fact. He did, however, trust Ur enough to believe that if her subordinates had truly been hooking up, she would have sat them down for a serious chat.

Ur was not without flaw but she had always respected that the freedom she had had compared to other handlers had been because the director had trusted her with the most complicated assignments and she had never misused this kind of trust because she had known better than anyone else how little Clive trusted anyone.

He was not sure if he wanted to see the corpse, if he wanted to see the hole in her chest. He did know that if he would ever get the chance to smash in that Asgardian bastard’s face, he would. And then, he would add some insults of choice just to make clear that he was not agreeing with the idea of taking revenge on one’s brother by burning another world to the ground.

Who did that self-proclaimed god think he was? All he had done so far was to maim and to kill – and this was hardly what a civilised culture was about.

His family line originated in Denmark – or better said: in Scandinavia – and right now, the knowledge that his ancestors had hailed the bastard who had stabbed his sceptre through Ur’s chest a god was a very bitter pill to swallow. There might have been some Asgardians who would have deserved such a treatment; the red-haired woman who had come to Earth to retrieve her wayward leader, for example, because she had seemed to understand what war was about and how it required sacrifice at time. Silver had seen the footage; he knew.

But _Jose_? This was the kind of rat who sat on a throne of false gold and spun lies like he did not have anything else to do. He did not deserve to be admired by anyone, not if his idea of a good plan was to arrive on Earth with the intent to cut down everything and everyone who dared to put up a fight, who did not agree with his politics.

* * *

**7.**

“Excuse me, Agent Holm,” the Captain said as he rocked back and forth on his feet. The expression on his scarily young face was solemn and one of Silver’s first thoughts was that after he had bought her a few Captain America trading cards for an anniversary, Ur had collected the cards and that rumour had it that she had wanted to get them signed by the Captain himself after she had heard that he had been found in the ice.

But thoughts of this kind only hurt now because she had been foolish, stupid, _idiotic_ enough to get herself killed by a tyrant who had been far out of her league from the start.

(As agents, they were prepared for a lot of weird stuff – but not for magic.)

“Yes, Captain?” he asked as he looked down on his tablet, opening an email he had received with an impatient swipe before his throat closed up. S.H.I.E.L.D. had never been known to waste time but this time, they were truly rushing things because Ur had not been dead for more than two days and they were already talking about where and when to bury her.

“Agent Mikazuchi said that Agent Frost was very fond of her trading cards and she did ask me to sign them,” the Captain said as he held out a little box, “and while her originals were ruined beyond repair, I found these and signed them,” he added before he awkwardly scratched his neck. “The commander also said that you and Agent Frost were close.”

So the commander had not mentioned that the agent who had bravely given her life and the agent who had been forced to watch this scene, unable to do anything had once been married. Well, perhaps it was for the better. Silver did not know whether or not divorces had been socially accepted in the forties and he was not going to let anyone think badly about the deceased because of this.

Ur had been someone who had always been as kind as she could afford to be and the idea that anyone would look down at her because of a decision she had made when she had been twenty-two did not sit well with Silver. It had been a long time for him to admit this but when he had been twenty-five and convinced that he would always better off alone, she had changed his mind the day she had marched into his room, her eyes gleaming and her posture rigid but ready to fight.

 _‘No man is an island, Holm,’_ she had said and he had never stopped wondering if she had said it because his last name meant that his ancestors had lived on an island or if she had just quotes one of the most famous phrases ever. With her, it had always been difficult to tell.

Sometimes, he had asked himself what would have happened if rather than to admit defeat, he would have turned her down that day, the way he originally had intended to because he had known better than to love someone he could only hurt in the end because his job was like a one-way-ticket to traumatisation.

And he had not wanted to be the one to break the heart of the director’s favourite agent because he had known that she deserved better. But in the end, he had started to make exceptions to his rules, had gotten too attached and finally, he had been in too deep to get out with his dignity and his heart intact.

This did not mean that he had not seen the end coming from far away and that he had not hated himself when he had broken her heart because he should have known better than this. He had never wanted to hurt her and to realise that in the end, there had never been another option, had stung because it meant that he had failed to beat the odds when it had truly mattered.

Taking the tastefully wrapped box from the super soldier, Silver sighed deeply. “I bought her the first set,” he said slowly before he shrugged and pocketed the box. “We were close.”

It sounded like the lie it was to him and he had an odd ashen taste on his tongue because he did not like having to lie about one of the few things in his life he had never wanted to lie about. But maybe he should have expected this end because it had been too good to be true. To find someone who loved you enough to put up with everything was something Silver had not even dared to dream about. It had not always been good and sometimes, he had asked himself why on earth he was in love with a woman who felt like getting up at four in the morning was a great idea but he had never really cared about it because she had never cared about his nightmares either – until they had gotten to the point where he had turned violet in his sleep, after Bahrain.

He had been very lucky to have someone like her but he had never known just how lucky he had really been until she had been gone and he had never even seen her anymore outside of work.

“I’m certain that she must’ve known,” the Captain said with the odd little smile of his that made Silver remember that the man was old enough to be his father and that this was extremely weird because he looked young enough to be his son. “She was a good soldier.”

“She nearly became a solider but ultimately, we recruited her first,” Silver replied and he wondered how many more little anecdotes he would have to throw in before people remembered that while her sacrifice had been heroic, it had not been the only good thing she had ever done in her life. She had been a dedicated agent with an unfortunate tendency to make sacrifices whenever she had thought it to be necessary.

This had made them opposites because he had always been looking for other options, even when there had been no other way out, and half of the time, it had made them laugh because it had been so weird to love the one person on the planet who would always make a different call.

“I got to say, you aren’t the arrogant bastard the commander warned me about,” the Captain continued and Silver nearly laughed because while Mikazuchi’s assessment would have been correct for the biggest part of his life, he was also the man who had been doomed to watch how the woman he loved had been killed for nothing and who was now haunted by her ghost.

“Guess it changes you when the only real friend you ever had in this agency gets killed off by a maniac,” he said and he hoped that the Captain would let it go because he had enough trouble already.

“About the funeral,” the man out of time started and Silver sighed inwardly because he did not want to talk about this. So far, his plan for that day was to attend, to sit through the condolences of everyone who remembered that he had been married to the deceased and then go to some bar and drown his sorrow. “Um, we’re all attending. Hawkeye and the Widow are kinda shaken by the death and … um, Redfox discovered his heart.”

He had expected for the both agents to attend the funeral as Ur had been their handler. But he had not considered that perhaps, everyone who was considered an Avenger would show. It was a strange idea that Doctor Orland who had been hunted by countless people in the past would attend a funeral as this had to be stressful for her but at the same time, he could understand it. Guilt was a powerful motivator and while he was far from believing that he could understand what the genius scientist was thinking, he could understand that there had to be a part of her who felt like it had been her fault as she had been used to cause the diversion that had ultimately led to the situation that had caused the death of one of the greatest agents Silver had ever had the pleasure to work with.

“Tell Hawkeye that no one blames him,” Silver managed to say although the words were not even his because if he had any say in the matter, he would blame the archer. Only did he remember how proud Ur had been after she had recruited the young man, how she had kept talking about the bright future he would have. She would never blame him and so there was no way he would disrespect her choices by putting the blame on someone who had been brainwashed anyway.

(And once more he remembered that he had been married to a freaking saint.)

“I’ll leave that to Blendy who seems to think the same,” the Captain said as he chuckled awkwardly and Silver raised his eyebrow before he nearly reached for his tablet again to transfer hundred dollar to Ur’s account because she had called this relationship a long time ago and had taken him up on the bet he had proposed, about five years ago.

Smiling thinly, he nodded before he lowered the tablet again. “You’d save me a lot of trouble if you could tell Blendy and Vastia that I’ll be going through Ur’s stuff next weekend, probably right after the funeral,” he said slowly and wished that this did not have to be like this because it was nothing he had ever wanted to do. “They were her subordinates, maybe they want some reminders.”

To call the Black Widow and Hawkeye Ur’s subordinates seemed utterly wrong to him but Silver was not going to be the one who would explain to Captain America that outside of work, the trio had been like a slightly messed up family, that after Hawkeye had brought Blendy in, they had worked through the brainwashing the woman had been under together with the help of psychologists. Perhaps if Ur had survived her encounter with the tyrant from outer space, she could have helped Vastia as well.

She had always had the backs of the people she had loved and this had always included the times when everything around them was going to hell. She was not just in for the sunny days and for picnics in the park. She was always in for the rainy days, for the times everything went downhill as well – and this had always been a reason for him to love her.

* * *

**6.**

Getting drunk after the funeral had not been Lyon’s idea but he had not refused the offer anyway although Sherry had been hissing in his ear that there were better ways to honour the dead than to gather in their apartment to drink cheap liquor although they could all afford more expensive brands, brands that would not leave them all with raging headaches in the morning.

But once someone decided that it would be nice to swap stories, he reached for the bottle and took more than just a sip because this was going to end badly. And judging from the way the other agents among the group looked, they shared this assessment. Sherry was sitting on the floor, her back against the heater and one hand of hers hidden by the curtain – likely the hand that held a knife – while the director was sitting on the couch, facing away from the man who had once been the husband of Lyon’s handler. There had always been tension between the both men and with the one who had kept them in balance gone, it was only a matter of time before the situation would get out of control.

“Swapping stories, really?” the director grumbled under his breath as he tapped one finger against the eye patch, a grim expression on his face. “What a _brilliant_ idea, Redfox.”

“I go first,” the other senior agent said as he cleared his throat and put down his bottle, a pensive expression on his face for a moment. “Guess you all know that Ur and I had history.”

“I’ll throw you out of the window if you start singing Someone like You,” Director Clive hissed under his breath as he threw his former rival a glare – not that anyone knew what they had been rivalling for. Some said it had been the position of director, others said it had been a woman.

“Nah, I won’t,” the widower (for the lack of a better term) muttered under his breath before he scratched his neck and stared at the ceiling. “Alright, so there was this time when we were still married and I woke up in the middle of night and she was in the kitchen, cleaning the silver,” he added with a snort. “When I asked her what she was doing – I may have been a bit indignant – she looked at me like I had just questioned the existence of … water. As it turned out, she had a rigid schedule and was not willed to step away from it. Ever.”

As someone who had been working with the woman for years, Lyon could confirm this. It had been helpful for him because in all the years he had reported to her, he had always been able to count on her following her schedule. It had been especially helpful when he had decided not to kill Sherry, when he had decided to bring the Black Widow in instead. Rather than to have to call her at work, he had been able to catch her while she had been in the gym just around the corner from where she lived and so he had been able to warn her.

She had not been overly excited – her exact words had been _“you’re getting me into so much trouble with that, Vastia”_ – but in the end, she had acted the way he had expected her to; by vouching for him until he had gotten around to handle everything.

“She was an idiot,” Redfox said and Lyon did not have to look down to know that Sherry had shifted, either to strike the man down or to hold Holm back from attacking the other man. In the end, he knew his partner too well to think that she took lightly when someone insulted her handler. “Look, I don’t mean it like that – I just think that,” he exhaled, “she could’ve waited.”

“Nonetheless, have some care how you speak,” the Asgardian demi-god said with a solemn expression on his face, his eyes flickering over to the Widow who was still glaring at the engineer. “The agent was a dear friend to many among us.”

 And this was quite the understatement because as far as Lyon was concerned, the late agent had been family – and he had always been rather short on that, making it even worse that he had lost someone else. For Agent Holm, it had to be even worse because he had loved the woman who had fallen for a good cause.

“She wasn’t big on patience, ever,” Holm said with a shrug as he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the other man. “Part of what made her a damn good agent.”

It had never been in Lyon’s plan to learn what had actually ended his handler’s marriage because he had always figured that whatever it had been, it was none of his business but along the years, he had been observant and just before the funeral, Sherry had asked because she had not wanted to accidentally offend anyone. As neither of them knew what had happened, they had made theories and the most popular had been that something related to their profession.

(Most marriages between agents that ended before one of them was crossed off ended because of an issue regarding the job, mostly because of the secrecy.)

“The bird jokes annoyed her,” Lyon said after a moment of awkward silence and prayed that he had been quick enough to cover up the mess in the making. “Well, I think I wasn’t the ideal agent … she was kinda annoyed most of the time.”

But this had never stopped him from making even more weird jokes and from calling her at the worst times to inform her about his latest adventure. It was easier for him to think about this than to consider that if only he had not fallen victim to mind control, his handler might be still alive. Sherry had yelled at him when he had dared to imply it in her presence and he was quite sure that even Holm had decided that it had been Ur’s own decision that had led to her death and nothing else. This was more kindness than he deserved but at the same time, he knew that it was what she would have wanted for him.

Sherry had told him that Ur had gone against protocol to pull her out of a mission and that she had heard rumours about the director being less than happy with his usual favourite agent because of this. Well, whatever scolding his handler might have received, she had dodged it.

“She was by far the most terrifying person I’ve ever met,” Sherry said and the hand that had been hidden in the curtain dropped to the floor, empty and open, as she reached for her drink. Lyon knew what she was talking about because he remembered the time when they had been in the cottage up in the mountains with only two scientists, working through the brainwashing and the programming little by little. What he remembered best was the way his handler had never flinched when Sherry had thrown a fit, the way she had never changed her own behaviour further than adjusting it slightly.

Somehow, Lyon did not want to know what kind of handler the future had to offer because it would never get as good as it had been with Ur ever again because there was little chance that there was someone in the agency who would understand that sometimes, an agent showed up at her doorstep in the middle of night and needed advice with the most ridiculous things regarding the real life.

He knew that Sherry had gone to Ur’s house once when she had just arrived in S.H.I.E.L.D. because she had needed new clothes, clothes that were not agency-issued and their handler had not minded the late hour. On the other hand, it had never been a secret that the older agent had never been one to sleep much at night, something she had never really explained although Lyon had asked more than once.

“Frightening?” Laxus asked, one hand on his _blasted_ hammer. “She was a warrior, I acknowledge this, but she seemed gentle … unless she was cursing my brother.”

“She _did_ have a way with words,” Clive muttered under his breath and Holm nodded slowly and even Sherry’s mouth formed a small smile as she sighed deeply.

“She was the one handler who never threatened me,” the Widow said and Lyon reached out, one hand on her shoulder as he remembered how long it had taken his partner to open up about her training and about what it had been like for her before she had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and the words she had used back then were all too present in his mind. _‘She doesn’t yell, doesn’t threaten me … makes me wonder what on earth makes her so sure that she can keep me in line … and frankly, I don’t want to know.’_

“She was a good person,” the director said as he tapped against his eye patch again.

“Shouldn’t have crossed her then,” Holm said as he lifted his bottle up and took a sip.

They had been hissing insults back and forth all day and while Clive was the director and therefore nearly untouchable anyway, Holm had been holding his own just fine. Well, this did not come as a surprise because the man had been married to a woman who had always been pretty clear about her own positions and had never tolerated pushovers.

“At least I’ve never divorced her for some weak reason,” the director snapped back and Lyon heard – although he was near deaf – how everyone inside the room did two things. Firstly, everyone inhaled sharply because this had been a low blow and everyone could tell. Secondly, everyone scratched the ‘maybe they are rivals because of a position they both wanted’ suggestion out of their heads. For once, Lyon could understand the notion that the original reason for the director and the nearly-retired specialist to fight had been a woman, most likely the one who had been buried only mere hours before.

“This was out of line, Director,” the Captain protested with a scandalised expression on his face while Silver Holm was, for the first time in the history of everything, stunned into silence and unable to snap back because it was as if the remark had knocked all air out of his lungs.

“All these years and this is all you have to tell each other?” Sherry muttered under her breath as she looked at the doctor who was sitting silently on a chair, watching the scene closely.

“I don’t know about you guys but I feel like this just got way more interest—” Redfox started before Orland kicked his shin with all her might and while she was not transformed, it seemed to hurt. For some reason, this was satisfying for Lyon because this was not the gathering after a funeral that did reflect how much the deceased had meant to all of them.

“I was wondering,” Laxus started and Lyon was rather sure that the following sentence would make him want to shoot arrows at targets a lot, “this burial rite … is it common?”

It was easily to realise that Laxus did not understand burial ceremonies on Earth at all but it was also clear that if he asked more questions, someone would hit him because their emotions were raw. Loss always brought out the worst in everyone and Lyon was not going to let the situation escalate.

Sherry smoothed the wrinkles out of her flawless black dress as she stood to collect some of the empty bottles and then, she shook her head. “I’m actually not too sure but I’d certainly don’t hope so,” she said as she glared at the both men who were still throwing each other nasty glares. “This strikes me as pretty immature.”

“Frost died a warrior’s death,” the Asgardian said, not for the first time.

He had been in the room when Ur had fallen, he had been there to see and hear her as she had passed away. In some hours, Lyon had envied the man for he would have killed to have been there for his handler because she had once dragged him out of hell by his hair, only for him to fall to corruption and lead enemies of her cause into her fortress.

“This doesn’t make it better,” Holm said as he stared at his hands where Lyon – _“I see better from a distance, you know?”_ – could easily see the spot where the wedding band had been once upon a time was still paler than the rest of his skin.

“To my dear friend, the Lady Erza, it would have made a difference,” the god of thunder said as he shrugged and Lyon rolled his eyes because he had heard about the woman in question. After all, he had followed his handler to New Mexico while Sherry had been busy babysitting Redfox.

“I’d guess that Agent Frost would’ve preferred not to die at all,” the doctor said as she rolled her eyes and angled her head, a faint smile on her lips. “Most people prefer to be alive.”

“Question,” Redfox started and again, Lyon knew that nothing good would follow. “The story she told Levy about the music dude in Portland … was there anything to it?”

Holm nearly choked on his beer and Hawkeye felt slightly sorry for the other man because this question was nearly as insensitive as the director’s previous remarks. Nonetheless, he could easily clear everything up but – not for the first time – Sherry was faster.

“No,” she said drily as she rolled her eyes. “Well, I guess depending on how you see it, it’s not completely wrong,” she corrected herself after a moment as she pressed her lips together. “The _cellist_ was part of a long-term assignment … and then became an inside joke for the team.”

“I invented him when we all went undercover and the mark was getting a bit too friendly,” Lyon added with a shrug as he reached for his partner’s shoulder and squeezed it slightly. He was getting better – the doctors had told him that he would make full recovery – but the loss of his handler was heavy on his shoulders although there was a part of him that still denied the truth of her death. After all, he had never been allowed to see the body which would have forced him to accept this pointless death.

“After the mission, he became the excuse whenever someone was asking about her love life and she didn’t want to answer,” Sherry added and looked up at Lyon and for the first time since the mind control, a silent message was passed on between them. _‘Do not let anyone know that to the day of her death, she was still hoping to fix things with Holm.’_

_‘Never planned on letting that slip.’_

Because they had been a team and among them, no secret was ever revealed unless it was crucial for one reason or another – and this had happened rarely in the past.

* * *

**5.**

Agent Ur Frost woke up on a beach and for a moment, everything seemed peaceful. She heard the waves crashing against rocks in the background and for a moment, she stayed still and inhaled the salty breeze and enjoyed the way the sunshine was warm on her bare skin.

Then, everything came back to her and she nearly threw herself off the beach chair she was sitting in. This had to be some sort of illusion; the last thing she remembered from before was being stabbed through the chest. Her hand moved before she had made the decision to move it and reached for where the sceptre had pierced through her skin and everything beneath but there was no blood, just a jagged scar.

So she had survived although she could have sworn that she had died, that she had not just seen the light but that she had also gone into it because it had promised her to free her from her pain.

But as it seemed, she had been wrong and rather than to die, she had just passed out. Now, she was not going to complain about surviving and after adjusting the strap of her swimsuit so that it covered the scar again, she sat up straight and scanned the area. She faintly recognised the place as a tropic island and prayed for the sake of whoever had brought her to the beach that she was wearing sun blocker because otherwise, the sunburn would be disastrous.

Exhaling, she closed her eyes again and willed her heartbeat to slow down. There had been the eagle of her organisation on her swimsuit so wherever she was, she had been brought to the place by fellow agents, likely to recover from her injuries. This was standard protocol and in the past, she had helped in guarding a recovering agent more than once. The next thing she considered was that there was something she had to talk about with the director – namely how her team was faring.

But before she would contact Lyon and Sherry, she would have to make sure that she was in the best possible state. Going after the Asgardian tyrant had not been her best idea but it had been something she had had to do. She had been reckless and maybe she had taken it a little too far by using a weapon that had not yet been authorised for usage in battle but she had paid the price. Some of her ribs still felt broken to her though she could no longer see any bruises and there was a nasty scar on her chest that would likely never fade something.

Well, there had been quite a few former superiors who had told her that she was downright crazy when it came to protecting the ideals of her agency.

She coughed and spat out some kind of dust which caused her to roll her eyes. She doubted that this was the first time she had woken up – otherwise she would still be somewhere else – but this was likely the first time she had stayed awake for long enough to try to figure out where she was, meaning that she had been meant to wake on this day. Otherwise, they would have kept her under for longer.

“Looks like you’re back,” a voice behind her said and she smiled faintly as she turned her head and looked at the director. Gildarts Clive had been the last thing she had seen before passing out and now, he was also the first person she saw after waking up. Of course, he was not the person she had hoped to see but if she knew her ex-husband, he was probably busy somewhere – she still could impossibly believe that he had truly ditched his career as a specialist to work behind a desk.

“Director,” she greeted as she pushed herself up a little, straightening in the chair.

“Not here on official business, Ur,” he replied and she allowed herself to relax.

“So no protocol in place?” she asked as she raised both eyebrows and reached for the water bottle on the little table next to her, taking a sip to wash away the odd taste in her mouth.

“Never figured that you’d like it anyway,” he shrugged and she smirked for a second before she stopped as it started to hurt; her lips too dry to allow smiling.

“Where are we?” she asked, straight to the point. She could have phrased herself differently, could have used her first question on asking about her team, her friends, her ex but she had always been someone who asked the question that might be helpful for her survival first. But, god, she wanted to ask about Silver. She knew that he had been on the helicarrier when she had gone down, remembered that she had seen him getting out of a quinjet shortly before Sherry had brought in the doctor. She wanted to know if he was fine, if he had gotten out of the mess alive. She had no doubt that her team was fine – they had gotten out of situations far more dangerous before – but she needed to hear that her ex-husband was safe as well.

“We’re on Tahiti,” Gildarts said and she grimaced because she was nearly completely sure that she had written down in her file that if she ever had to go on a recovery vacation, she wanted to go somewhere where it was cold because she had always preferred the cold.

“Tahiti, really,” she said as she rolled her eyes at him and was quite happy that he had mentioned that no protocol was in place. As much as she respected him, he had been her partner before he had become her boss and she was not going to let him forget it. Ever.

“I’m sorry but, you know, doctor’s orders,” he said and she sighed deeply.

“How’s Silver doing?” she asked carefully before she sighed. She looked at Gildarts and she knew what he remembered. He had to remember a time when she had been married and mostly happy, a time when she had had to come to his office to tell him that all the rumours he had heard were true, that she was indeed dating someone from the specialist department but that she could not confirm anything about any make out sessions in abandoned briefing rooms. She knew that this was what he was thinking about because she had always been able to read him like an open book. Something that was most likely mutual because Gildarts had been her friend throughout the difficult days of her life, had been there even when she had screamed at him when she had wanted to be left alone with her tears, had not let her down when she had demanded that he should do so after she had been injured and a blizzard had been above them.

“Why do you ask questions that hurt you?” he asked quietly and she was not sure what she was meant to tell him. She could be cliché, could say that there was no such thing as a rose without thorns and no love without pain. Or she could be honest by just telling him that she had never stopped caring.

“I married him for a reason,” she shrugged instead and prayed that he would let it go, that they would not have the hundredth discussion about the topic because for once, she was too tired to fight with him about anything. “So, just spit it out. I won’t get jealous or anything.”

“You didn’t hear it from me but there’s nothing for you to get jealous about,” the director sighed.

She would lie if she would say that she was unsurprised by this because as far as she was concerned, there was no reason for him not to have a girlfriend or something like this. They had not been married for years and even if Gildarts had faked her death to a degree where everyone at work thought that she had been killed, Silver would hardly mourn her to the point where he would do nothing else. “Can’t deny that he still manages to surprise me,” she said after a moment before she took another sip of water. But then, the world around her was madness lately. There had been magic and she had never been prepared for that.

“He has been working hard, he’s safe,” the director said and she smiled to herself before she turned her head and mentioned silently towards the bag that stood next to her old friend. “I brought you some presents,” Gildarts sighed after he had followed her gaze. “A new suit, some stuff we nicked of Redfox’ table.”

“Only the best for me?” she asked as she wondered what the true reason for his visit was. He was a busy man and while he could certainly take the time to visit an injured agent, it was something he would not do lest there was something he wanted to ask and did not trust anyone else with.

“You’re one of my best agents, queen,” he said as he shrugged and handed her the bag. “No worries, it’s no undercover assignment, I know how you feel about them.”

The old nickname made her smile for a moment before the notion of undercover work wiped the smile off her face. She had to admit that there was something to dressing up to the nines and luring everyone into a false sense of security before turning the tables on them. But undercover work required meticulous preparation and this had lost charm for her a long time ago. And if she could believe her team member and undercover expert, there was a slight risk of losing sense of what was real and what was not.

“No undercover work sounds good,” she admitted as she opened the bag and had to smile at the eagle crest that was on literally every item in the bag. Well, this was S.H.I.E.L.D. and somehow, it made her feel like she was coming home after a very long absence.

“How does flying around the world and dealing with 0-8-4s sound?” he asked and she laughed because this sounded suspiciously like a mobile command unit and she had always wanted one of those but after she had been put in charge of Vastia (and Blendy, later on), the dream had seemed out of reach for her.

“I’d need a pilot then,” she said and her gaze focused on her old friend. It was cruel of her but she had to know how far she could push him, how much freedom he left her.

“This looks suspiciously much like your next mistake but if you get him to fly for you, I won’t be the obstacle,” the director grumbled and she raised her eyebrows even higher because this was not what she had expected. In the past, Gildarts had been rather protective and for him to allow her to get back into close quarters with someone who had broken her heart once meant that he had done something he felt guilty for; there was no doubt.

(But she would rather not know what he had done this time around.)

“Gildarts, I am going to ask you a very weird question,” she said as she looked at the sunglasses she had found inside the bag, nostalgia dwelling up inside of her. “Does he know I’m fine?”

“You know, you looked kinda dead and you said that they needed a push so I may have let them all think you were dead,” he replied hastily as he scratched his neck. “ _He_ knows though.”

She groaned as she got up and slung the bag over her shoulder, nearly losing balance because it was heavier than expected. “I’m getting changed, you’ll explain the rest to me on the way back,” she said with a sigh. She was tired of the games he played but it was something she could not get away from. Not even being the fact that she was his friend and supposedly his one good eye had stopped him from playing her and while she hated him for it, it was also something she had gotten somewhat used to.

(She remembered that she had threatened to quit more than once but she kept coming back.)

Heading to the S.H.I.E.L.D.-owned house, she waved at the two junior agents who had been guarding the place and at the doctor who was on his phone in the living room before she found a room that seemed to be hers. A quick shower later, she sighed as her fingertips made contact with the fabric of the new suit. It was something she had missed without even knowing it, the tactical suits that were meant to be worn under other clothes. Getting dressed was done in silence, the movements well-practiced along the years.

Clothes made people, a statement that was true as she decided while she stepped back into the bathroom to look into the mirror as she painted her lips red, the only dot of colour against the grey of her shirt and the black of her other clothes. She did not quite feel like she had before her run-in with the Asgardian sceptre but as long as she looked the part of Ur Frost, _before_ no one would mind having to deal with Ur Frost, _after_.

As always when Gildarts was keeping something from her, she knew that she would regret everything dearly sooner or later but for some reason, she was curious to see how it would end this time. So far, it had always ended in a minor disaster. That he had not told her about the true threat had cost him his eye and his original right hand because she had quit the position afterwards and had returned to field work where she had always felt more comfortable.

But while she always hated the outcome, she did always enjoy the ride and this was why she did not hesitate before she placed her signature on the form she had to sign to get a new S.H.I.E.L.D.-apartment in New York as her old one and her belongings had apparently been parted between her ex-husband and her two most favoured subordinates after her supposed death which had, according to the files, occurred three months earlier.

“You’re damn lucky that I love you more than I hate your secrets,” she muttered as she clipped her badge onto her belt and slung the far lighter bag over her shoulder once again.

Of course, Gildarts had never planned for a case where she might say no to his newest plan and so she was given a full briefing the moment she buckled up inside the jet he had used to fly to the island. As she was informed, her team would consist of two scientists and one specialist along with one pilot. Ironically, the pilot was the only one who was not set yet, apparently because _“I knew that you’d pick him anyway”_.

She did not like the notion of being predictable but she liked the idea of her superior acknowledging that she would demand to be allowed to pick her own pilot. Back in the days, before she had gotten shot into the leg, she would have steered the plane herself but things had changed and whether she liked it or not, she had to accept that some things would never be the same again. She would never again wear dresses that bared skin because she would never want the world to know just how close she had gotten to death. She would never again feel comfortable around knifes and Asgardian artefacts because she would never forget the way she had nearly died.

She spent three long days in a hotel room in the best part of town – only the best for the best – before she was cleared to return to headquarters. Apparently, the tale of her death had been classified as level 6. Beneath and above, people figured that she was alive. She had not asked about her Strike Team; she knew that they were a special case and she wanted to yell at Gildarts for giving out the order that the Avengers could not know that she was still alive.

She wanted to go back to having coffee with her team at three in the morning after a nasty mission. She wanted for them to come to her when they had problems even master spies and assassins could not solve. She was not much older than them but in a way, she had always been more of a mother than an older sister to them.

But she did not allow herself to think about this as she unlocked the door that led to the dark office where Silver was sitting behind a desk. A part of her sighed, another part felt like she was finally coming back home and frankly, she had missed him.

He looked up and she sighed inwardly before there was a witty comment coming for her and she could do nothing to protect herself from it. “Gotta say,” he started with a crooked smirk, “dying really made you prettier than ever before.”

She rolled her eyes at him before she approached the desk, leaning against it like she owned the place. “Good to see that you’re still the same,” she said although she could easily tell that he had changed. It had been a long time since they had been in the same room, since she had been able to look at him from such a close range but she was certain that the grey in his hair was new, that it had not been quite that much when she had seen him from across the helicarrier, when she had been headed for the bridge and he had been led away to some other place on board.

But she was not going to comment on this because it had a long tradition between them to pretend not to see the small traces of weakness in the other. After all, she had known him for a long time; they had been on the same academy and she faintly remembered a very embarrassing time when he had walked by when she had just come out of a bathroom, her mascara smeared after she had cried upon receiving the news of her grandmother’s injury. He had played dumb then, had pretended not to notice the tears, and for some reason, this had been so much kinder than what all the others had done.

“Heard some interesting rumours,” he said and she had to hide her smile because it was misplaced. There was no reason for her to smile just because she was standing in the same room as him again and they were not yelling but at the same time, there was no other explanation.

“They are probably true,” she admitted as she crossed her arms.

“Your honesty is refreshing as always,” he said as he kept scribbling away on his report.

“I need a pilot,” she said and she wondered if this was really all she needed before she remembered that she needed so much more. She needed someone she could trust, she needed someone she could count on. She needed someone around who still cared enough to keep her alive if everything went down the drain.

“Do you really need a pilot?” he asked as he looked up at her.

“I handed in my license a long time ago, you know that,” she replied slowly.

“And you know that this isn’t what I’ve meant,” he replied and she sighed inwardly because this only meant that he still knew her a little too well after all these years.

Her palms on the desk, she leaned forward until her forehead was nearly touching his. “If you play this card, I’ll play dirty too,” she muttered as she glared at him. “I know you’re bored behind this desk, that you’re tired of doing the same thing again and again.” She sighed as she fought the urge to reach out and smooth down his messy hair. “And I’m pretty sure that you’ve waited for an offer like mine,” she added as she tilted her head and analysed the grey in his hair, musing if it had been stress or grief what had put it there. “So consider your answer carefully.”

For a moment, he was silent and she worried that she might have pushed him too far, that he was different from the man she had known once upon a time. They had ruined each other once before, when they had been younger and dumber, but this was a new chance and she was not going to ruin everything all over again. In a way, this was a poker game and whoever could bluff better would be the winner. She knew that he wanted to hear better reasoning from her than just ‘I need a pilot’ and he knew that she was going to choose her words carefully because words were powerful and she was not going to give him anything he could use to play her later on lest she was absolutely sure that she could still trust him the way she used to.

“You aren’t going to let me win, are you?” he sighed after a moment and she shook her head. “Well, then be happy that I let you win … this office annoys me too much to pass up the chance.”

“It’s a pleasure to do business with you,” she said drily as she turned to leave. A part of her wanted to stay, wanted to tell him how sorry she felt about everything but this would have to wait until she could articulate herself again. “I’ll mail you the details.”

* * *

**4.**

Three days into living on a plane, he wanted to confront Ur, wanted to ask her if she knew that he had been there to watch her die, if she knew that he felt guilty enough to follow her through hell if this was what she asked him to do. But then, he remembered that her brain had been rewired and that he had orders to stay silent, that he was not supposed to ask her about anything that might make her think about her death and her resurrection.

(Sometimes, he really loathed his job because keeping a secret like this was not his style.)

“You know,” Ur said when she cornered him in the cockpit as they were miles above the ground, “I didn’t think you’d be quite that … cold after everything we’ve been through.”

He wanted to hit her for this remark but then, he sighed. She did not know what it had been like for him. She had not attended her funeral, she had not had to sit through hours of colleagues expressing their sympathy, the sadness they all felt regarding his loss.

“I thought you were dead,” he said quietly but he knew that these simple words could never contain the meaning of the pain he had felt. He was no stranger to loss but he had never experienced it like this. There had been enough friends who had fallen along the years but he had never been the one others had told how sorry they were about the loss. Until the day of the funeral, no one had ever looked at him, patted his shoulder and said _‘I knew what she meant to you’_.

He had nightmares from these words because the only reply he had found had been _‘but did he know it?’_ because the idea that she could have died without knowing had kept him awake.

Loving someone and knowing that it was as good as impossible to be with said person had been hard on him but he had somehow managed it because he had never had another choice. When he had let her go because he had not been in a position to love anyone, he had wondered how he would feel about it later. He had not expected that it would hurt like this.

He had been through hell more than once before in his life but he had never felt quite as bad as he had felt the morning after her death when he had woken up and the first thought had been that he should have stopped her, that he should have insisted on having a communication device, that he should have told her to stand down for long enough so that he could get there.

And then, afterwards, things had gotten complicated. He had been called into the Triskelion and the director had looked at him, patted his shoulder and expressed how deeply shaken he was by the death of someone who had fought so hard for the ideals of the agency. Three weeks later, he had been told that the death of her ex-wife had been faked and that she was alive and recovering in Tahiti.

This was when he had gotten suspicious because as far as he was concerned, Ur would never step onto an island like this, not even when it was a vacation paid for by the agency. And he had seen her die, had he not? So he had doubted the truth of what he had been told and ultimately, someone among the highest officials had realised that he knew better than whatever farce he had been playing and so he had been summoned to a diner, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and they had told him as much as they could tell him and then, they had left him with something that had looked like a choice at first but was nothing of the sort and this had been easily known to anyone because the agency could not let someone know about this unless the person was part of the project.

Essentially, they had asked him to betray the trust Ur had put into him and at the time, he had been willed to agree because if this was the price he had to pay to keep her safe from what was yet to come, he would pay it over and over and he would not regret.

(Only that he had started to regret the moment she had stepped into his office and asked him to be the pilot and had not stopped regretting ever since.)

“I was dead,” Ur replied as she rested her hand on his shoulder and Silver made the mental note that he should tell the director that Ur was different from before because so far, there had not been a single joke about having died and this was something that meant nothing good.

“…I saw you fall,” he replied and his fingers curled themselves around his wrist. He did not talk about what he had seen but she deserved to know because if she did, she might be a little more careful in the future because he did not want to see this ever again.

“…figured you might have,” she said as she drew lazy circles onto his shoulder, a gesture that was nearly absentminded and dictated purely by muscle memory which reminded him of how her death had been real and that whatever they had done to her had changed her.

“It was difficult for me,” he said as he mused how much more he could say before he would accidentally hint at the miraculous healing and how this had not been natural at all.

“Kept forgetting that you never stopped caring since the last time you called was two years ago,” she said drily and he rolled his eyes because she knew that it had not been his decision not to call her. He would have called her if he had had something to tell her aside from _‘I bought a new stapler last week’_. His transfer to a safe desk job had meant that for the first time in his career, she had the more interesting stories to tell because while she was no specialist, she was a field agent and while this usually meant that his stories were more interesting than hers, she had been the one who had gotten to talk to Iron Man relatively early and the one who had been there after farmers had found the hammer.

“Before that guy from outer space stabbed you through the chest, you were nicer,” he said drily and wondered if this was something he should report to the director. There had been concerns that the way her brain had been rewired would change her personality and that in this case, she might have to be wiped completely and forced into retirement somewhere. But he was not going to let this happen on his watch, not after all they had been through.

“Sorry,” she muttered as she slumped down in the free seat and massaged her temples. “I’m just … tired. This last encounter was pretty … how do I put it delicately? … confusing for me.”

“In case you worried about me being jealous or anything, I wasn’t,” he said as he patted her shoulder and wondered if she would ever believe him when he said something like this. “We haven’t been married for years and you’re an adult,” he added and briefly considered to hit himself.

“This may surprise you but you aren’t be sole concern these days,” she replied drily, her lips forming a half smile. “If anything, I have been worried about my old team.”

“Because you can’t talk to them and inform you about your survival?” he asked but he knew the answer already. Unlike most other handlers who were usually happy once they had gotten rid off a particularly eccentric team, Ur had always liked to work with Vastia and Blendy because they had made her laugh. She had recruited Vastia herself although her orders had been different – arrest or kill, not _‘bring the kid in’_ – and when he had recruited a brainwashed Russian assassin he had been supposed to kill, Ur had been the only one who had not been surprised. Well, Silver had not been surprised either because Vastia had been under his ex-wife’s influence for a solid three years at the time and this would have warped the common sense of anyone.

“They are my original team,” she shrugged and as always, he had to roll his eyes. Whenever she tried to play it extremely casual by hiding her true intentions, it could be assumed that she was distressed but tried her best not to let it show. She was one of the best agents he knew but as someone who knew her well, he could read her like an open book most of the time and this time around, she was rather bad at hiding her true intentions. She wanted to get back in contact with her old team and while this would have upset most, he understood. Their lives and careers had never allowed them to think about children and while she was not too old to think about it, she had made it clear that for the time being, her job was going to be her top priority and whenever she said something of this sort, he was inclined to believe her because she had never lied about it in the past. Therefore, the Strike Team she had been supervising had turned into her makeshift family, especially after their divorce which had fallen into the same time as Vastia’s decision not to kill the Black Widow.

And someone like Ur, someone who was willed to die for her agency would most certainly do the same for her family, whether it was by blood or not.

“Their clearance level does entitle them to knowledge about your survival,” he said as he wondered in just how much trouble this would get him. Frankly, it would probably get him suspended but it would be worth it. “So maybe, you should just contact them.”

The commander would personally behead him for this and the director would express just how disappointed he was but they both should have considered that Silver had never been one to tell Ur Frost that she could not have something, mostly because seeing her happy was much nicer than watching her try to put on a brave face while she crumbled inside. She had always been a family person and while she would never admit it, she would always regret that her job had kept her from having a real family more than anything else, more than having to keep secrets, more than getting shot at all the time. And since her old team was her family and it was not completely impossible for her to contact them, Silver was willed to take his chances.

Especially since if Ur was happier, she might stop thinking so hard about everything she had ever been through and that would keep her safe from the knowledge she should be kept away from.

“Pretty sure that I was told that I shouldn’t do that,” she muttered and he nearly sighed before he spotted the dangerous gleam that was so familiar to him in her eyes. “But I wasn’t _explicitly_ told not to contact them. Let’s go.”

* * *

**3.**

She did not sleep well and as she walked through the plane, she had not been this worried in years. Somehow, talking your ex-husband into flying her to the place where her first team was located had sounded better before she had actually done it. Well, if something would go wrong, she would take the fall. Knowing Gildarts, he would buy whatever story she might tell him about her talking Silver into anything anyway because he had always figured that any man was weak to the flirtations of women.

(She knew that it was wrong of her to play his weaknesses but it was the only way she could get what she wanted without having to burn somewhere for her goals.)

She was tired of acting like she had a plan all the time because right now, she was willed to see this through. Silver had promised that he would break the rules with her, that she did not have to steal the plane to get what she wanted. But this not mean that it was easy for her to get to tell the both agents she had taken under her wing – _fuck_ , she was starting to sound like Lyon – because between having to fly missions, she had also to remember that Hawkeye and the Black Widow were both busy as well. She knew that it would take time before she could afford to return to her old team, she knew that she had to be patient but this was difficult for her lately.

Having to act like she did not realise that something was very wrong with her exhausted her even further and once again, the idea of early retirement struck her. It would be easy for her to just drop of the grid; she was fluent in multiple languages and she had always had a knack for handling other people. It was what had made her a good field agent and a good handler. Lyon had told her more than once that any other handler would have stirred up a lot of trouble after he had decided to go against his orders and to bring in his target and while she had just rolled her eyes and delivered her usual statement about how she was no one special, they had both known that he had had a point.

Remembering the conversations she had had with her team, a strange feeling of homesickness struck her and she wondered if they would ever forgive her for what she had done, for what she had let happen to them. They deserved to know that she was fine, that she was alive.

A hand on her shoulder shook her out of her thoughts that had been circling around the same problems for what seemed to have been hours and she pushed up her reading glasses and turned around to look at Silver who had appeared behind her.

“Keep forgetting that you got glasses now,” he said.

“How late is it?” she asked instead of replying to the offhanded mention of her glasses before a yawn escaped her. It had to be late, she decided, otherwise she would not be that tired.

“Three in the morning,” he said as he drew lazy circles onto her shoulder. “You should sleep.”

She laughed softly as she closed the book she had not been reading for at least an hour after her thoughts had wondered of to somewhere else. “Never missed that, actually,” she said as she took the glasses off and returned them to the pocket of her jacket. “You telling me to sleep.”

He shrugged and for a moment, he ceased to draw circles onto her shoulder. “Someone had to remind you of that,” he shrugged before he raised an eyebrow. “Not trying to change your mind about going to see your team, by the way,” he added and for a moment, she questioned if he was supporting her to get back at Gildarts for something that had happened between them back in the days but then she decided that this would be too immature for anyone to do.

“Didn’t think you’d do that to me,” she replied calmly as she opened another button of her jacket and rolled her shoulders back and forth. As nice as the plane she had gotten was, it was also suspicious because most other agents would never get even remotely close to a plane like this. But then, Gildarts had dropped more than one line about ‘only the best for the best’ and Mikazuchi had backed him up for once, muttering something along the lines of ‘ridiculous favouritism’ and she had not dared to ask.

“Clive ain’t gonna win me over anytime soon,” he said and she nodded slowly before she stretched and flinched as her spine made odd noises.

“I’d hate to have to fight him for your heart,” she said as she rolled her eyes at him.

“I suppose you know that you’d win that fight with both hands tied behind your back,” he replied and she chuckled before she switched off the light and pulled her arms out of her jacket’s sleeves as she took a step towards the bunks. “You really should rest up.”

She agreed with him there; it had been a long time since she had allowed herself to sleep too little because as she had heard from countless other agents again and again, there was nothing more important to a good agent than a solid sleep schedule. Nonetheless, she was still awake enough to joke around and so she winked at her former husband and brushed her hand over his shoulder before she spoke. “You know, you should go to sleep as well,” she said.

She was not sure why she kept being so damn sure about this but she knew that after all the years that had passed since their divorce, the years in which they had barely talked because it had been either painful or awkward, he still carried a torch for her – this was how Mikazuchi had put it once and it had amused Ur because the wording had been rather outdated – not that she had told the younger woman about this. But she was more than alright because she still cared too much as well and in the years that had gone by, she had been too busy handling her two misfits to fall for someone else. Perhaps this had protected her from more heartbreak.

“Guess you’d be the one to tell me that,” he replied as he yawned.

“The plane is secure,” she said softly as she opened the door to her bunk and threw her book onto the bed before the jacket followed. “You can sleep safely here.”

“Only that we both know that I’m the most dangerous person on this plane,” he said grimly and she exhaled before she turned around and reached for his arm. She had let him play this card once before and while she had been busy giving him space to heal at his own pace – Bahrain had screwed him up, badly, and she _knew_ – he had gone behind her back and one day presented her with the idea of getting a divorce. She had been furious with him because it had looked to her like he had been choosing the coward’s way out and so she had snapped at him and placed her signature on the files and walked away, refusing to look back because she had been through with him. (Or so she had said; the truth was a different story.)

“I wouldn’t have wanted you on the plane if I’d doubt your self-control,” Ur said sharply and maybe it was the fatigue that made her voice harsher than usual. People had treated her like she was made of glass for a while now and she was through; she wanted to be taken serious again. She had been dealing with situations that could have caused great problems for the rest of the world on weekly basis once and now her every move was controlled which meant that no matter what she did, there was always someone undermining her authority.

“Or you just refuse to acknowledge that I’m a problem,” he replied and she had to press her fingernails into her own palms because there was a large part of her that wanted to hit him for this. They had been over the _‘When is a monster no monster? Oh, when you **love** it’_ nonsense a million times and she was getting tired of repeating herself.

“I dealt with a traumatised woman who was recovering from brainwashing,” she hissed as she sat down on her bed and crossed her ankles, absentmindedly toying with the laces of her shoes before she finally got rid of her shoes and rested her feet on the bed. “Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“I’m not Blendy,” he replied and leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at her with the most calculating expression on his face. “We’re different.”

“Yes, I know … she wouldn’t treat me like I’m a child,” she snapped as she clenched her hands to fists and slammed them against the bed, wincing slightly at the pain. “I don’t know why you feel like this is fair on me but you’re being very rude,” she added as she massaged her temples.

“Perhaps because sitting through your funeral was fucking depressing,” he snapped back and she had to grin because this was more like it. Sadly, it only made him more annoyed and so he glared at her like he had the right to. “It’s not funny.”

“Oh, I think it says a lot about my current mood when my own funeral amuses me more than most things do lately,” she replied as she shrugged yet somehow, she seemed to have struck a nerve because the annoyance faded from his face as he frowned at her.

“Um, it was a nice funeral?” he tried and she glared at him before he sighed and sat down next to her, one arm wrapped around her shoulders. “I’m kinda sorry, I guess.”

“I’m a mess,” she muttered as she hid her face behind her hands, once more questioning why on earth the director had thought that it would be smart to let her take care of a bunch of people who had no idea how a team was meant to work. This stressed her out and it made her miss her old, well-tuned team even more. Sherry and Lyon had fought over ridiculous things but they had never stopped talking with each other over a bowl of cereals.

He sighed as he pulled her against his chest and let himself fall onto the side, cradling her against his body. “Yes, you are,” he said as he patted her head. “But that’s okay.”

“I don’t want to be a mess anymore,” she said as she wondered how long it would take before he would go back to running from her because this would break her heart all over again.

“I don’t think that you’ll have any say in the matter,” he said and she exhaled, a sigh escaping her. “But you’ll manage to fix yourself … all with time. You were always better at that than me.”

What made her sad about this was that it was the truth. She had been mending herself again and again for as long as she could remembered and so she had mastered it a long time ago. But it was a sad kind of fame for her; it was nothing she had ever wanted to perfect.

“I had a lot of practice,” she said as she closed her eyes for a moment.

“You are the one who will tear me apart,” he muttered against her hair and she wished that she could say that she had no plans on doing so and being able to believe her own words. The truth was different; whether she wanted or not, she was one of the few people who could hurt him and whether she wanted it or not, she would likely end up misusing this power. It was strangely comforting to know that if she would do this, he would drag her down with him.

“I wouldn’t do this to you,” she said but she knew that he understood what she really meant, that she would do it to him _again_. While he had been the one who had scared her to death the time she had woken up to a knife on her throat, she had been the one to stop talking to him when she had been hurt after the divorce, the one who had buried herself in assignments.

“You did something much worse to me,” he said and for a moment, she wondered if he wanted for her to hate herself because if this was indeed his intention, he was on a very good way there. “You died on me and I couldn’t do anything aside from looking at it.”

“…I know,” she said and turned her head, resting her forehead against his chest. “I’m sorry.”

And she wished that she could stop being sorry for everything because she had not wanted to be killed, she had wanted to stop a tyrant from taking over the world. She had not expected that the sacrifice would come at such a cost but she had been prepared and she had prayed that Sherry would be able to stop Lyon without having to kill him because this would have been something she would never have forgiven herself.

* * *

**2.**

Here was the first truth: she did feel like she was betraying her old team when she first laughed about a joke the engineer – Hibiki Lates – had made because the joke had not been quite that good and she had been better at keeping her distance before she had been stabbed through the chest. Until she had been told that she would handle Hawkeye, she had never been really close to an agent aside from the partner she had lost when he had become director and keeper of secrets and from the husband she had lost when Bahrain had demanded its tribute from him. Lyon had changed her for the better, just like she had changed him as well, and laughing about jokes that were not quite as amusing as his bird jokes seemed wrong.

But there she was, standing in the middle of the laboratory, her brows furrowed as her body shook from laughter and it felt like something inside of her was disconnected for a moment before it was put back together – a feeling she had grown somewhat accustomed to lately although she did not talk much about it. The biochemist – Lucy Heartfilia – had shrugged when she had mentioned it during a check-up after a minor incident and made the hypothesis that, just perhaps, it was the normal side effect from suffering a terrible injury.

(And apparently, the wound she had suffered did qualify for this.)

She never got much further because Silver made his appearance to ask about dinner and then, she got sidetracked again and this did not even surprise her anymore although she felt like he was distracting her on purpose although she had yet to work out what he could win from this.

And she knew him too well to think that he would ever play a game if there was nothing for him to win. He was a specialist – or had been one, at least – and he lived after strategies, nearly as much as she did and it drove her up the wall that she could not guess his game.

Perhaps it was not truly helpful that she kept blinding herself because there was something inside her chest that kept humming that she should fix the mess they had gotten themselves into before another tragedy could strike them down once again. However, it was not like her to keep herself in the dark on purpose and she questioned why on earth she did not want to know.

It was not her usual style to ignore something that was glaringly obvious but she wanted to believe that whatever he was keeping from her was something he kept a secret for a reason because if it was anything else, it would hurt her again.

(Perhaps she should have figured that if she was already thinking this way, she was only setting herself up to be disappointed all over again.)

Here was the second truth: memories of pink hair on black pillows was slowly being replaced by images of green against red pillows and she nearly hated herself because she wanted to cling to the memories of her original team a little longer. Sherry did not deserve to be forgotten by someone who had promised not to.

But there were differences between Sherry Blendy and Karen Lilica and the most important was that Ur had been able to trust the Widow which was something she could not do with the other woman. Rationally speaking, this made no sense whatsoever because Lilica had been part of the agency for the longest time and she had been tutored by an old acquaintance of Ur’s while Sherry had been the formerly Russian assassin Lyon had brought in although he should have crossed her off but Ur had learned to trust her instincts and had rarely regretted it.

She did not want to openly question Mikazuchi’s assessment but she doubted that Lilica would work out as part of the team on the long run and that, sooner or later, she would have to draw the line and replace the specialist with another.

This, she did mention to Silver and rather than to tell her that her concerns were not justified because the green-haired woman had proven herself on multiple occasions, he nodded and took her worries just as seriously as he would have done it a long time ago, letting hope bloom inside her chest. It made her happy because there had been more than one time when someone had looked at her like she had just stated the weirdest thing and she did not like this.

“It’s all about trust,” she shrugged as she sat on the counter, her feet dangling in midair. It had been one hell of a week and she was feeling like this was the way she had last felt when it had been just her and Hawkeye and a million assignments they somehow had to handle. “I want to trust the team.”

“You don’t trust me, though,” Silver replied as he poured coffee into a cup and raised an eyebrow at her, nearly as if he was daring her to tell him a lie.

“I acknowledge that you keep a secret from me but I want to believe that you’ll be honest with me when the time comes,” she replied as she raised her left eyebrow at him. There had been a time when she would have taken the bait and told him a lie but these days were over and she much preferred to be as honest with him as she could afford at this point.

“You’ll never cease to surprise me,” he said and she rolled her eyes as she nudged his shoulder.

They were better, now, but they were not fine. They would not be fine for a very long time and she did wonder at times if she should move things along a little quicker before she remembered that nothing good had ever come out of rushing a relationship.

“Just … if things end badly,” she started before she stopped herself and decided against it. There was not indication that something would go wrong although Centipede was certainly not the organisation she had originally suspected it to be. There had to be something bigger behind it all.

This was the third truth: she had not seen HYDRA coming and she hated everything the moment she looked at Silver and for some reason, she could not recognise him. She did not want to think that he was HYDRA but there had been indications that he had been communicating with someone through a secure line and he had tried to shoot Lates and—

She did not want this because this was a betrayal unlike whatever she had been prepared for. She had been pushing everyone towards the truth lately and what she had uncovered had chilled her to the bone – she had been dead for longer than she would have thought and she wanted to strangle Gildarts for bringing her back like this but once more, he was out of reach when she had something to say to him.

Her life was a mess and, once again, her flying fortress was out of control, not quite falling from the skies by certainly out of her hand. And this terrified her because Heartfilia was at the Hub and she had to deal with an ex-husband who might be a traitor and a genius engineer who was freaking out because his partner was not there to hold his hand and calm him down.

She still did not trust Lilica but she had to cut her losses and right now, the survival of her team was what mattered most to her. For once, she did not even mind that Agent Deliora showed up unannounced and uninvited because the man mentioned something about having a man back at the Hub as well and she tried not to focus too much on her own team member there but rather on finding out what Silver and Gildarts had done to her – aside from shaking her trust and faith in them to the core.

Silver should have known better than to try to cross her; in the end, she would always see the betrayal coming before it happened. She was just not always quick enough to dodge the bullet. This time, from the looks of it, she had managed to avoid it.

* * *

**1.**

Silver was not blind and he could tell that Ur was falling apart little by little.

The fall of the agency she had dedicated long years of her life to had made her age a decade within mere days. Finding out the truth about T.A.H.I.T.I. had been hard on her as well and when she had looked at him and said that she could no longer trust him because he had not told her, he had left and gone after Mikazuchi to retrieve the truth. He wished that he could have found the director too because yelling at Clive for a good reason would have been exactly what he would have liked to do but instead, he had returned.

There had been no way for him to make up for the initial betrayal aside from returning because he had grown to care about the bunch of misfits he had helped to assemble. Looking back, he wondered if she should have chosen people who had lived through their defining moment yet but instead, Mikazuchi and he had chosen half-children, agents who had seemed to be the kind that would thrive under Ur’s influence.

Only that they had picked a bad egg as it had turned out and Silver could understand the rage Ur had to feel about this because this was betrayal and he knew best how much she loathed this.

But he had returned and he was there to kick ass and to make sure that she did not die again.

His ego would have preferred for her to be surprised when he arrived with information she would hate to hear but then, she had always known him well enough to know that while he would always give her the space she needed to calm down, he would never let her go on in her life while thinking that he out of all people had betrayed her.

And whether she wanted to admit it or not, she needed him because with Lilica turning out to be a traitor, she was one specialist short even with Fullbuster – when had that guy become one of them, anyway? – stepping in. She needed someone reliable, someone crazy enough to go up against everyone in the world for her sake. And while she had a way of inspiring loyalty, there was no one else like him.

“Figured that after I told you that I didn’t know, you might want to know who knew,” he said as he handed her the case that would shake her world but at the same time, he signed up for whatever plan she had. From the looks of it, they had gotten their hacker back which was why the scientists looked calmer but he knew her too well to think that she would cut her losses and stop trying.

No, HYDRA and Deliora would both go down and she would personally ensure it.

“Thank you,” she said and reached for the case, her hands trembling. It was as if her hands remembered something she did not and a part of him wanted to stay but he knew that she had to do this alone, that he could no longer shield her from the truth.

“I’ll gather the team,” he said as he turned towards the door, “I suppose we’ll have work to do.”

Her lips twisted upwards into a crooked smile as she nodded and he nearly laughed because whether she was happy or not, she had decided that she would function and that she would not break until she had ensured that justice would be served.

“I’ll be with you in a few,” she promised.

She had to be angry at him still but he was not the only one who could bottle up his anger until there was a target he could let it out on. Neither of them was the kind to throw a tantrum, they both knew that anger could be used as valuable energy and this was what he was aiming for.

“After this is over,” he said as he pressed one hand against the door, “we got to talk for real.”

She was silent for a moment, focusing on recovering the truth but then, she lifted her head and looked at him intently before she lowered her head. “I will yell at you after yelling at Gildarts,” she said as she rolled her eyes, remembering that her superior was supposedly dead. Well, it was not the first time this story was told.

“And I’ll listen,” he said as he tipped his fingers against his forehead and left her alone.

Gathering the team was easy enough, the scientists were always together and the hacker was trying to flirt with the legacy kid – with mixed results. There was an underlying tension in them and it did not take a genius to figure out that they were questioning what had happened, why he had left and why was back. But these were questions he would not answer to unless they were actually asked and from the looks of it, no one would ask.

But then, Gray Fullbuster scratched his neck and pushed himself away from the wall he had been leaning against and raised an eyebrow. “Back again?” he asked and it sounded nearly aggressive which was odd because so far, the kid had not looked like he was big on emotions.

“Your almighty leader has an unfortunate habit of getting herself into trouble and I’m not going to attend her funeral again,” he said drily as he looked at the blond man who was sitting on a chair and staring at his hands with the most miserable expression on his face. So far, he had not revealed why he was freaking out like this but Silver did not think that the boy would manage to stay silent much longer. The moment Ur would ask him, he would spill the beans because his kind never kept secrets from superiors, that was something only Silver’s kind did.

Ur was pale as she joined them and for a moment, he wanted to ask before he remembered that in the past, this was what had triggered her breakdowns and as much as he wanted for her to be emotionally balanced, she would have to soldier on for a little while longer, at least until they could be sure that everything was back under their control.

He knew that she could handle this much, that she would manage to stay in control until the work was done. It would be difficult but she had proven countless times before that she thrived when the situation was less than ideal. Actually it was what he was banking on now. Only that he knew that she would worry and likely make things more difficult for herself than they had to be and this would cause problems. She believed that she was already cracking under the pressure of the responsibility for her team and everyone else but Silver knew that if only she would grit her teeth for a moment longer, she would pass the pivotal point and she would be fine.

“Ma’am,” Fullbuster started as he stood straight and nodded at his new superior. Well, with S.H.I.E.L.D. gone, there were no more superiors but there was little doubt that Ur was still in charge and that she would make the calls and that the others would follow her. Once again, Silver could only admire how easy it was for her to make others follow her through hell. He had an excuse; he could always say that he followed her because he loved her but the others did not have the same excuse.

Ur cleared her throat before she sat down on the table and folded her hands. “If we go after … Lilica to stop her, we’ll be on our own,” she said as she looked at the younger agents, “and I assure you that this will get rough and … kinda dangerous for all of us.”

“What she means is that with S.H.I.E.L.D. considered a terrorist organisation, we’re pretty much helpless,” Silver threw in and nearly smirked at Ur’s grimace at these words. She had been too used to having a badge that meant something for years and honestly, their agency had fallen apart in the worst possible moment, in one when Ur had not been the most stable person in the first place.

“The whole Lilica thing, that’s on me,” Lates said and Heartfilia hissed, anger written all over her face. “I was the one, um, hooking up with her; I should’ve known.”

So this was what had caused the rift between the scientists. It was not quite what Silver had been expected – especially since had been so sure that the scientists had been the ones hooking up behind their backs – but it was something that made sense and this had gotten rare. Whether it had been discussed or not, it had been assumed by nearly everyone that the scientists were the ones who came as a couple. After all, they had a shared alias.

“Don’t tell me that I’m the only one who walks into the doomsday without having hooked up with someone on board,” the hacker said with an exasperated sigh before she sat down on the chair, a frown on her face as she glared at everyone. “Lates and the traitor, our almighty leader and Tall Dark And Handsome, Lucy and what’s-his-face…”

“I did most certainly not hook up with anyone!” the blonde woman protested as she glared at everyone who was not above her in rank, her face crimson with embarrassment.

“Neither did I,” Ur said drily. And it was another little detail that gave away just how much the experience of dying had changed Ur because before, she would never have bothered to correct a subordinate who had made a bad assumption unless the success of a mission depended on it.

“How about we stop discussing who hooked up with whom, we see what we need to do to stop Deliora and Lilica?” Silver asked after he had cleared his throat, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Terrific idea,” Ur said as she slumped down on a chair, throwing a faint smile into Fullbuster’s general direction. “Well, you were waiting for orders, weren’t you?” she asked and the kid snapped into attention as if his life depended on delivering whatever she wanted.

“Without the usual equipment and support, this will be difficult,” Heartfilia warned as she reached out to pat her partner’s shoulder, obviously quick to forgive him which meant that she had not been dating him while he had been sleeping with Lilica which would have been a real asshole move anyway. But this also meant that Silver had no clue what on earth was happening on his own plane. Well, the betrayal of the other specialist had proven as much.

“We can’t beat HYDRA in the here and now, yes,” Ur said as she shared another glance with Fullbuster who seemed to catch on, “so we’ll have drag them to even grounds.”

Silver sighed inwardly because by now, Ur’s love for outdated technology and equipment that was still working was getting a little ridiculous although she certainly had a point because whatever HYDRA was prepared for, they would not count on tech from the forties. So in a crazy way, this plan might actually work out – well, he was not the only one to ace strategy classes. 

* * *

 

**_0._ **

They had survived which was a miracle in itself and she was the director now after she had yelled at the old director for a pretty long time which had made her feel much better, especially considering that one of her team was in the hospital, still in a coma which made it impossible for anyone to be certain about the damage he had suffered. She was angry and she knew that she would not stop being angry for a very long time because Lates had been a child compared to her, to Silver – to her old team. What had happened was on her and she would not forgive herself for it because she should have known better than this. She should have known better than to send two scientists who were not cleared for combat after their traitorous specialist. She had aced her T&S – Tactics and Strategies – class and even her younger self would easily have seen that her scientists had been sacrificial lambs she had personally led to slaughter.

Her fist went straight through the glass before she knew it.

“You know, my offer to lay out some mats and go some rounds like in the old days still stands,” Silver said as he threw her a towel and leaned against the box she had been sitting on for hours while trying to figure out what she would do next. Rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D. would take a lot out of her but she had been assured that she would not have to do this on her own, mostly because her team had decided that they had nowhere else to go and that even being part of an organisation labelled as criminal was better than having nowhere to go.

Nonetheless, she was happy that she was no longer alone in the dimly lit room, mostly because she had been missing his humour just as much as she had missed to know that he had her back, no matter what. After all, he had let her go on a wild goose chase to work out just what had been done to her – or maybe it had been his way of getting back at Gildarts who apparently had ordered him to make sure that she did not do this.

At the same time, she knew that it would take her a few weeks to recover from Gildarts’ latest ploy. After all, he had been her partner once and they had worked together for years. There had been a time when she had seen more of Gildarts than she had been able to spend time with Silver – and this had been back when she had been married. It hurt to consider that she had lost Gildarts as a friend when she had told him that she could no longer be his second-in-command.

“Be careful what you say; the last thing we want is anyone getting the wrong idea,” she replied as she raised her eyebrows at him. Of course, there was no way that their team did not think that they had something going on as Heartfilia’s outburst before everything had gone even more downhill had shown quite impressively.

“I don’t see you promoting me to second-in-command,” he replied with a shrug and she sighed.

“I’m not big on making offers I know you will turn down,” she said with a shrug as she wiped thin traces of blood off her hand and sat down next to him. “You know that.”

He was silent for a moment and only drew lazy circles onto her upper arm but then, he sighed. “You’ll have to appoint someone soon,” he said quietly and she groaned inwardly because she had been considering this as well and the decision was no easy one. Logically speaking, out of all the agents their agency currently had, he had the highest rank after her – or had had, at least, until the original S.H.I.E.L.D. had broken apart under their feet. He was the logical option but he was as likely to want the position as she had wanted to become director.

“I know I do but as I said right at the beginning, I won’t do anything that will make you uncomfortable,” she replied and gritted her teeth because although she had promised this, it had been difficult to keep this promise. It had taken mere hours for them to be on the same team before she had had to send him into a combat situation. It had taken two missions before he had told her that combat was okay but that he did not want to be responsible for anyone aside from himself and, _just perhaps_ , her.

“I doubt that we’re still in a situation where you can be that considerate,” he said with a shrug that was so casual that it had to be an act, an act she nearly wanted to fall for because she could use this as an excuse later on when everything went to hell.

“I don’t want to be the kind of director to push agents around like pawns,” she said and if there was resentment in her voice, it was alright because Silver knew fully well that for all her doubts in the system – especially lately – she had always been loyal to the cause. “If I can no longer afford being _that_ considerate, we got a major problem,” she added grimly.

She had never wanted to be director but at the same time, she could understand the reasoning behind Gildarts’ move – and this scared her. She did not want to understand why her old friend felt like it was a good idea to put the weight of so many lives onto her shoulders but she remembered that back in the day, their old supervising officer had always said that one of them would lead the agency and that she had turned the responsibility down then because she had never been in for the fame and fortune. She understood that S.H.I.E.L.D. was still needed and that it had to be rebuild from its ruins, from the smallest beginning. The old agency had grown too big and it had no longer been possible to keep an eye on the different parts.

It had gotten too big for Gildarts to oversee and when it had been brought down, he had had no choice but to accept the consequences; that he had to go and make up for his blindness. And this was the only reason why she had accepted the position, because she had known that there was no other way for them unless they wanted to leave S.H.I.E.L.D. as a ruin on the ground.

“You really have been through a lot,” Silver said and she frowned when she heard the hesitation in his voice and the frown grew when he stopped drawing circles onto her arm because it was rare for him to interrupt himself. “We all have been through a lot.”

“We are agents, this is what happens,” she said as she rested her head against his shoulder because for once, the weight of the decisions she had been forced to make were heavy on her. She had not been director for long but she doubted whether she could truly get her people out of the mess alive so that they would get to see the end of the way – the day when HYDRA was finally, finally only a ghost of the past.

“You’ll be a good director,” Silver said and she wished that she could believe him.

“Gildarts wasn’t a bad one either,” she replied as she massaged her temples. She had been furious with him many times and sometimes, she had felt like no matter what she said, he would never care but all in all, he had always wanted the best even though this had often led to events that had not been part of his plan because sadly, not everyone followed orders.

“I don’t worry about much,” he said with a shrug and then, he finally spat out what he had been wanting to say for a while if his odd behaviour could be considered evidence. “With you, I only worry about one thing – that you’ll try to carry the burden on your own,” he added as he sat up straight, “because you don’t have to do this on your own. I’ll be there.”

“I don’t have to tell you that you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” she replied but by now, it was nearly a joke because they both knew just too well that he would never leave, not as long as she was stuck between a rock and a hard place, not until she was out of the woods.

“If you really think that I’ll leave you in that mess, you gotta be losing it faster than I had figured,” he replied with a snort and she nudged him before she had to grimace. They were both worried about the cryptic symbols she had been scratching for weeks now, especially since they knew that after Deliora had started with this, his mental health had deteriorated faster than anyone would have guessed. Of course, it was to argue that the man had likely never been quite healthy to begin with but this did not change that they were both worried – because the last thing anyone needed was a director who was losing her mind little by little.

So far, she had been able to cover it up and she was nearly happy now that her old team was not around because they could tell when she was putting up an act. Therefore, Silver was the only one who knew, the one who had received orders he had not liked at all. But she had had to be prepared for the worst case and if there was someone she trusted to pull a trigger with nothing but good intentions on his mind, it was Silver.

(Or Lyon, maybe, but he was currently not at hand.)

“Tired?” he asked as the room fell silent. He would not hold it against her, it had been stressful and there had to be guilt dragging her down.

“I’m starting to feel old,” she said as she reached for a pen before she changed her mind, folding her hands in front of her. “Did you ever wonder what would’ve happened if you hadn’t joined?”

He had never wondered about this alternate life but this did not change that he had wondered about how different his life could have been if he had not made certain decisions. The decision that always been easiest to question – especially after watching how a tyrant stabbed her with his stupid sceptre – was what would have happened if he had never told her that it would be better for them to get a divorce. It could have been a world where they would have had a few children, where they could have found a way to make things work between missions and briefings, between reports and coffee.

“I suppose that while I would have come out a few scars shorter, it would have been boring,” he shrugged before he leaned forward, reaching for her hand because it was not like her to bring up philosophical questions unless she was once more driving herself crazy with something. “Ur,” he said as he brushed his thumb over the scar on her wrist. “What’s the matter?”

“I never wanted any of this,” she said before she flinched, lifting her hand. “That came out wrong,” she muttered as she reached for his other hand. “The director thing, the commander thing before that, too,” she admitted and he wondered how long she had been feeling this way but never said anything because she had acknowledged that she was needed and that she could not get out of this show as easily as someone from the outside would think.

And he understood because he had always understood. He had known her when she had been the best shot of her year and he had known her when she had come home with a couple of bruises and a smirk because she had been working for S.H.I.E.L.D.s newest recruit and _“That boy will go far, I just know it”_. He had married her when they had been nothing but kids in the same way their scientists and their hacker had been children before they had been betrayed. He had been there the day she had screamed at the comms, telling Vastia’s old partner to get out because the bomb was going to go off.

“I know that you were never in for the power or the fame,” he said as he pulled her to her feet, “but here’s something I have learned … power is best kept by people like you.”

“I know I said I wouldn’t ask you and that the old clearance levels are pretty much meaningless anyway,” she said and he had to grin because this was so much like her and god, he had missed this way of hers. “Still, since you keep my secrets from the team, I was wondering…” she added while her fingers drummed a quick rhythm against his arm.

“Not sure if you’re proposing or asking me to become your second in command,” he replied as he spun her around, his hand clasping her bloodied one and she smirked, “but you know that I’ve always been a sucker for a pretty face like yours.”

“I always felt like you were the best person to deal with our marital status,” she snorted as she tilted her head backwards and grinned even wider, “but the promotion would be yours.”

“You know that you’ll confirm all the rumours, yes?” he asked as he pressed his lips against her temple and closed his eyes because frankly, she would not be herself if she would care about any rumours. The agents of their reformed agency knew that they had picked the right side when they had joined up with Ur and if there was someone among them who would rebel against her authority because of the mere fact that she was human, they would not need that person anyway.

“They’ve assumed that Gildarts was sleeping with whoever his second was for years so I don’t see any issues there,” she said before she closed her eyes. “Remember your order though.”

“I don’t want to have to put a bullet through your skull, Ur,” he admitted and the next thing he knew was that she pressed her hand against his jaw and glared at him. “Why do you do this to me?”

“Because you’re the only person I can trust with this,” she said as she exhaled, all tension leaving her body. “That’s the whole secret. I trust you to make it painless.”

“For someone who died once, you’re surprisingly worried about dying again,” he said but he knew that she was not going to let the topic go. After all, she was rather stubborn.

“The last time I was killed, it was by someone who seemed to enjoy my suffering,” she said, her teeth gritted, “so that made the experience rather … unpleasant.”

“I’ll find a way to fix this before you lose your mind,” he promised and he prayed that he would get to keep his promise. After all, if he would have to pull the trigger on her, he would never forgive himself, mostly because she still had him wrapped around her little finger the same way it had always been. Denying her request was difficult but when the other option was to kill her, he would work on a Plan B.

“In case you were wondering why you and not Vastia … I don’t want my blood on his hands,” she said as she pressed her lips into a line and fell silent for a moment. “Don’t get me wrong, I know that you’d hate killing me but … from what I’ve heard, he blamed himself for the Jose thing…” she stopped, exhaled sharply and then continued to speak. “I can’t do this to him.”

“Not again at least, I get it,” he said before he cradled her face in his hand and leaned down, “but just so we’re clear … I let this go because I don’t see anyone killing you over this problem,” he said before he kissed her. “Got it?”

“Convincing as always,” she muttered.


	16. would you swear that you'll always be mine? ;; sherryon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh love, you will break my heart one day but remember, my heart is not yours alone.

For as long as Sherry Blendy could remember, her soul marks had never made sense to her.

There was the messy cursive on her left collar bone, reading out  _‘hey, can you pass me the ball’_  in blue ink which was the perfect match for her best friend’s  _‘if I do, can I play with you guys?’_  and this was the mark she was tracing as she paced around in her room because two of her other marks did not make sense at all.

(At seventeen, she had decided that she would probably have long driven herself insane without her platonic soul mates because there were only two marks written on her skin that had not been revealed yet.)

The marks in questions mirrored each other in a way as they were written in a similar handwriting and in the same odd shade of silver, circling her wrists. According to her adopted brother (dark green mark on her shoulder,  _‘I hope I didn’t scare you’_ ), there was no reason to worry because while it seemed to mean that shades of silver indicated romantic partners as opposed to the familial green or the platonic blue, there was a possibility Sherry did not like to think about: that she would lose her first ‘classical’ soul mate early in her life and that she would find another later on.

She did not like this idea because neither “hey, do you need help carrying that?” nor “whoa, you’re really beautiful” deserved to die because they both sounded like they were nice people. 

Sherry  _wanted_  to meet all her soul mates, wanted to know what sort of people they were so she could figure out what they had in common and why fate deemed them to be good matches but she would be patient. She did not want for any of them to die and the idea that she might have to lose one to find another did not make her happy. If anything, it stung. It was the kind of thought that was the reason behind her pacing.

She was nearly eighteen when the world fell into place and  _“hey, do you need help carrying that?”_ arrived in her life as the transfer student and for a moment, she was not sure if she should be happy or not but then, she looked at the silver-haired boy and wondered for a moment how she would end up losing him – because she was not the kind of girl to have two romantic soul mates at the same time.

Remembering the second mark was what made it difficult for her to focus on her words and she hoped that he would forgive her for stuttering her reply – then, he had known she would stutter all his life.

“I-I think I got it now.”

He was nice, if not exactly what she had expected when she had discussed the topic with the girls she called her friends, the girls who could not know just how many soul mark she had written all over her body because there were quite a bit of prejudice in some and jealousy in others.

The truth was that this scared her even more because she knew that she would fall for him and that she would end up losing him somehow and that this would break her heart. Wiping away her tears once she was back home and could cry, she wondered what good soul mates were when hearts still ended up broken.

(This might just be what she could do research about once she left school behind and set her sights on something better and bigger -- university, namely.)

Saying yes when Lyon – tall, silver-haired and scarily handsome – asked her out was something she did before she had thought about it but then, there had been little else she could have done because no matter how heavy the burden of knowledge was on her shoulders, she enjoyed his company and his dry humour that made her laugh so easily, no matter how much she hated herself for not telling him what she knew. 

She did not know how she was meant to address the topic of her second silver mark with Lyon and so she smiled and told him about the other marks she had, took him to meet her brother who raised an eyebrow but did not say anything because it was her life and it was her place to choose when someone got information pertaining her marks. Unsurprisingly, her best friend nearly said too much but she dug the heel of her shoes into his foot and Sting shut up, unwilled to risk anything.

She was nineteen and off to the next town to visit the university there, solely to make her family happy because she knew that there was no way that she would stay at home when life was like a mighty river and designed to carry people off to new shores, new adventures. However, as it was the university where her brother taught geology (among other things), it was expected of her to check it out at least. Her best friend’s romantic soul mate had decided to tag along and the sole warning Sherry got before her life was thrown upside down was the weird expression on Yukino’s face before she followed the white-haired girl’s gaze and looked down at her wrist where  _“hey, do you need help carrying that?”_ lost its silvery gleam and turned into a hopeless shade of black. 

This was the truth: Sherry Blendy had always hated it when in romantic movies someone’s mark suddenly turned black because from what she had heard, it was incredibly painful and as most actors had never felt the pain, the acting in these parts was always incredibly stiff.

This was also the truth: after experiencing the pain, Sherry decided that if there had ever been an actor to feel the pain, they would likely never have been able to play in romantic comedies again because it felt like someone had just torn her heart straight out of her chest and squeezed every sense for love or affection out of her. 

They made it back to their town before Sherry’s phone rung and although she was still too choked up and nervous to speak, she could listen to what Sting told her. Apparently, Lyon had been crossing the street when a car hit him and he had been rushed to the hospital instantly where they had put him into surgery right away. According to his aunt who had – and this was a surprise to anyone who had met the woman – freaked out when her own, lilac mark of  _“I think you’re pretty, aunty, but mom is prettier”_ had turned black, he was going to be alright but that he would take some time to heal and recover. 

The collective fading of soul mate marks had occurred when Lyon had flatlined during the surgery but now, he was out of danger again.

Truth be told, Sherry did not feel ready to go visit Lyon in the hospital for two days. There was a part of her that wanted to go but according to his aunt who kept her updated, he was still unconscious and would remain like this a little longer as the doctor’s had induced an artificial coma.

After two days, her brother lost patience with her as she kept pacing around the house, massaging the black writing on her wrist – it felt like scar tissue to her and she figured that was fitting, and finally drove her to the hospital and informed her that he would be back for her three hours later. 

She did not like to feel weak and indecisive and so she got out of the car and followed the instructions she had received earlier to Lyon’s room. When he had been still in the intensive care unit, she had had an excuse not to visit him because the access had been highly restricted and she had not been allowed to see him anyway.

Now, her heart was beating much too fast as she knocked and slipped into the room. He was supposed to be awake lest he was napping which he apparently did most of the time and for a moment, she stopped in the door and just smiled sadly because she had never thought she would ever see him bandaged like this – and she had never wanted to see him this way either.

Upon hearing her enter the room, he turned his head into her direction and smiled faintly at her in a way that made her want to scold him because he was in no state to move around in any shape or form.

“Whoa,” he said, “you are beautiful.”

She did not move for a moment and then, she exhaled slowly before she took a shaky step. This was not what she had expected but in a weird way, it did make sense to her. But this did not mean that she did not cry when relief ran through her body.

“You really, really scared me there, Lyon,” she muttered as she pulled back a chair and sat down, trying to find a way to figure out what to say next because for once, Sherry Blendy was out of words. “Thought you had died when the mark turned black.”

“According to the docs, I did,” he mumbled as he moved his fingers and she took his hand. “Sorry.” 


	17. but i still haven’t found what i’m looking for ;; general

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home is where the heart is but their hearts have broken a few times too many for this to be still an accurate indicator.

* * *

The city might have been suited of her if it had been made for a girl who had eyes as blue as the sky and ancient battles in her veins. Lovely as she was, the goddess of love did not feel at home in a city mortals called the city of love because she did hardly feel her own fingers there because she was drowning in herself. It was terrifying and it felt wrong to her and she wondered how much longer she had to go before she would fall into pieces.

She was not alone, one of her oldest friends was with her but even he could not calm the feeling inside her chest that she was in the wrong town. She belonged somewhere else, somewhere where the skies were wide and open above her head, where she could walk on and on and on for days without anyone ever trying to catcall her – she craved a place that had not yet been corrupted by the mortals’ darker side.

She was growing tired of being away from places she would truly have called home. Lyon had once joked and said that she had always been meant for the skies and she had rolled her eyes and playfully pushed him away because she had never wanted to own the skies, not when her feet belonged onto the ground.

The town’s luxury did not impress her, it was nothing she had never seen before. She kept buying sapphires in the same shade of blue her true love’s eyes held and pearls whiter than her skin. She knew that it was a weak consolation but there was nothing else this town had to offer unless she wanted to steal from herself by filling the gap inside her heart with mortal lovers that would matter little in the end.

She remembered how she had loved a boy, once. A boy who followed his mother, his hair as white as the snow that always accompanied the goddess of winter. She remembered a young man she had loved because his lips had felt like prayer against hers.

(Only – who did the gods pray to?)

She remembered sitting with the sun god and patching him up, golden ichor all over her trembling hands, and she remembered whispering to her oldest friend that she did not know how to love someone without burning them to the ground. Her love was strong, it was absolute – and it ended deadly far too often.

She remembered whispering into the night, again and again, that she did not want to leave another heart behind after she had burned it down. She was not a good person and she could easily harm the very people she wanted to save. Her own heart was always on fire and the world around her was made of straw and caught her flames far too easily.

(And people blamed her when everything went downhill, when everything burned.)

Some people might be like phoenixes, these were the people she saved when she destroyed them, but most people did not rise from the ashes she buried them in and she had long grown accustomed to the taste of ashes on her tongue because it was what she could never truly escape from – because she would always hurt others when she wanted to heal them, when she wanted to piece them together.

* * *

The city was always going to be rain rather than snow and the goddess of winter yawned as she stepped out onto her balcony, long hair falling down her back. It had been twenty years since she had last seen the one she had lived with for millennia – only to realise that they were not meant to be permanent in each other’s life, that it was not safe for either of them – and sometimes, she felt like it was betrayal for her to have chosen a city of rain over a city of snow.

The city was bright beneath her and in another age, she would have laughed about it before turning around and looking at whoever had been with her, hearing nothing but one simple truth in their voices: that no matter how many lights a city had, she was still bright than it.

(“This place isn’t fitting for a queen like you,” Silver had said once and she wondered if he had been trying to mess with her head or if he had been genuine for once.)

It did not really make a difference because he had been right. She had been queen, more than once. She remembered silk and velvet against her skin, the most delicious food on her tongue. She still was divine but her lifestyle had changed. She no longer lived the life of a queen and she no longer wore a crown. She now lived a different life, still glamorous but in a less obvious manner because she had needed a break from being the one everyone always ran to.

It was true what the mortals said: it was lonely at the top. It was lonely because no matter what, it would never be as perfect as it had been when she had been in the company of her family ever again. She missed them dearly because she was no monster. She did not enjoy the way things had played out but she had accepted that it was likely the best possible outcome.

She had ended in a city that glittered like ice in the sunlight, no matter how much it rained, and her children were lost in the winds, travelling and figuring out who they wanted to be. Her – not husband, he had never asked her to marry him and she had her pride – old lover was in another town much like the one she had ended up in, pushing papers across a desk that made him look important while wondering when something that would wake him up would happen. She knew that sooner or later, his patience would leave him and that he would abandon the huge town to let himself be carried away by the waves, hoping to find the kind of adventure he could go on without giving away who he was and who he had been once upon a time.

She went by the name she last had had a millennia ago these days and sometimes, she smiled and nodded when someone recognised it but failed to realised that it was still attached to her. It did not matter anymore because the name was meant to be the proof to her friends and family that she had not forgotten, that she had not died yet.

(The rain on her skin reminded her that she was still alive and yet, she kept wishing it was snow.)

(Snow would be much preferred because it would either announce the arrival of a member of her family or because it was the one thing that would make her feel like they had not forgotten about her and that at least one of them cared enough to send her something better than a hug.)

* * *

The city was far enough away for anyone to know that she had millennia and tragedies in her veins. Sometimes, it made her happy to have finally escaped and sometimes, she wondered why she had ever felt like she had had to run. She was divine and she was strong and she had forgiven herself for the entire business with the nymph ages ago because there was a time and a place for guilt and for someone who was immortal, the time was never and the place was nowhere.

It had been childish, some would say, but if only the goddess of righteous war (hint: there was no such thing as this) stole from the goddess of revenge, she should not be surprised if Minerva did what Minerva did best.

For the nymph the red-haired goddess had loved, it had been somewhat unfortunate and Minerva remembered Sherry’s accusing glare but an eye for an eye was the easiest way to make someone pay, especially when death would have been too merciful.

(Sherry did not like the idea of love being used as a weapon but Minerva argued that it had always meant to be a weapon and sometimes, she knew, the other saw her point.)

(Revenge all too often followed love where it had been hurt and betrayed.)

She knew where Sherry was because the other woman was smart but not smart enough to drop off the planet without leaving some kind of trace behind. Sherry was someone who needed a lifeline, something to anchor her when she was washed away and had to remember who she was meant to be. Minerva would not admit it but she needed the same – only she did not believe in clichés and for the goddess of love to hide out in the city of love was highly predictable to her. Although the main reason for Minerva to know what Sherry was doing was that Minerva would do the same if she was in the other woman’s shoes.

It had been lifetimes (if she was mortal) and sometimes, she struggled to remember her first name, her real name because time had washed it away. The mortals had named her and renamed her, had changed her myths but had never dared to unravel the mystery because even they could easily tell that it would be reckless and wrong to mess with a goddess.

Time passed too fast sometimes and this was why Minerva had chosen a small town, one that had veins, little grachts were small boats rested in the afternoon sun. It was not the kind of place where anyone would look for her – perhaps because it had been two-hundred years since anyone had tried to find her.

On some days, she struggled to remember the faces of those she had, once, loved. On other days, she had difficulties to look into the mirror and remember that she had chosen to walk away because it had been what she had had to do. These were the days she hated most because they made her feel vulnerable and she had never been this unless she had chosen to pretend to be. She knew what others said, knew how the goddess of time – always the fortunate one and Minerva did not hold much fondness for fortune – claimed that some days, she woke up and felt like the world was hers for the taking before she remembered that she had already taken it a long time ago.

The truth Minerva hated was that Ultear could always go home because she was loved by so many and that the goddess of time chose not to because she preferred a world of doubts and questions over the unconditional love of her family.

Ultear tore herself apart to atone for a sin she had never committed because she worst she had done was to descend into the darkness of the underworld to retrieve the one she loved. Ultear woke up with guilt on her tongue like ashes, Minerva felt like some days, she did not even woke up anymore because all her days followed the same routine and not even the charming little boats could make her feel happier.

(Minerva  said that she had not thought about her father in the six-hundred years it had been since he had lost his life.)

(She lied; she thought about it every day and dreamed of his death every night.)

But the nightmares were easier to deal with when the boats on the grachts reminded her of the Underworld and thereby of someone she had not seen in eternities.

* * *

Her father had called her a natural disaster once but these memories had been washed away because she was the goddess of the sea and she cared little about what someone who was long dead and gone had said once. In fact, the old man had been right without knowing it. She was a natural disaster. She was each tsunami that ravaged the land, she was each wave that washed away another life – because water killed more than fire.

(Not that her brother Igneel would ever want to her this kind of truth.)

Aquarius liked the wild city she had ended up in another centuries of travel. She enjoyed the way the city was wrapped around the wild sea and she liked the town’s heartbeat – steady, ever so steady but still resounding in her chest – well enough to keep the waves from tearing it away.

(Bias was wrong and she would be judged harshly if the others knew but they did not and they would never figure it out either because she was a little smarter than most.)

(And she was not the first to bend the rules to save what she loved.)

There were a few siblings she had been missing but they were all too far away and they would never follow her call – Ur was happy in whatever glittering city she was although everyone knew that there was no town big enough for her and Igneel had been building himself a house close to a volcano because after centuries of travelling the world, he had finally found his peace there. And Aquarius, for all her flaws, had been happy for him because he had deserved it.

They had never been truly related but when the universe had spat out Aquarius, Igneel had been the first she had met and she had liked him well enough although he had been a fool even then and so they had continued their path together, stumbling across Ur and her _wretched_ consort only days later after they had both passed out in the middle of the desolate land they had first had before they had made it flourish.

Later, they had been considered siblings not just by the mortals who had deemed them the most dangerous among the gods – which was an interesting thesis as Silver killed more than Ur – but also by the older gods who had raised them.

Aquarius had learned to love her foolish brother and her emotional little sister as millennia had passed and she had also learned not to underestimate either because Igneel was only easygoing until something truly mattered to him and Ur might be the youngest but she had always been the one with the ambition, the one reaching for the crown. Aquarius faintly remembered that her little sister had once reached for their _father’s_ crown when she had been what the mortals would likely call an infant.

The ice princess and the hothead were the only ones Aquarius wanted to see in her paradise on mortal soil because they would understand. Igneel would like the place because of the wild spirit that seeped from the mortals into the ground and back again and Ur would likely enjoy the way nature was sprawled all over the city and how the mortals accepted it. They had had more siblings but they were not the ones Aquarius wanted to see in the city that had become her first home in a small eternity.

But for Aquarius, nothing was better than to walk down the beach to the little hidden bay as she felt the sunlight on her back and tasted the salt of the ocean on her tongue because sometimes, she wanted to pretend that she was no one special, that she did not have the blood of countless mortals on her hands.

It was a lie.

But it was a beautiful one.

* * *

She liked the sun for reasons she did not talk about although she was certain that her mother did know because mothers – mortal or divine did not matter – always knew what their daughters thought. Ultear’s love for the sun was something she never knew how to think about because the god of light – Sting – was one huge moron in her humble opinion.

(And she could already hear her sister-in-law’s hissed protest.)

Ultear liked the sun because she did have some past with the darkness of the Underworld as she had once walked darkened paths to free someone who had been imprisoned there. Invading the realm of the god of death was something that would end badly for most and so she had not been too surprised when she had had to pay the price for her not-so-minor transgression.

And ever since, she had preferred to walk within the light. She could do without the warmth but she quite liked the idea of a place where she could walk around for days without seeing a too familiar face. There were people she missed sometimes but it was easy to forget about this when she went out and danced until the blue of the night sky faded into greyish pink in the first hours of the morning.

She was not always happy and sometimes, the idea that one day, she might end up in a corner and would no longer be able to run, terrified her but she did not care much about her family finding her, about them visiting her and telling her that it was time to come home – not only did she know best when the time was right but they also had no real home.

She knew that she got lucky with her parents, that a certain goddess of revenge would like to punch her because there had been so much fortune and luck in Ultear’s life that the odds had to be evened out by force and she also knew that one day, everyone had to pay for the good things that had come to them before they deserved it.

But not to have a real home was a small price to pay when everything else was near flawless, when the family was strong in spite of small arguments once in a while.

Ultear knew that she was a lucky one, in spite of the burden on her shoulders and she knew that one day, she would have to pay the right price for everything.

(This was what Ultear would never tell Minerva: _I know why you truly dislike me and it is not because the fates were kinder to me than they have ever been to you. I know that you want to know how I stole from Death himself and did not just walk away but also lived to tell the tale._ )

(This was what Ultear would also never tell Minerva: _there might have been a world where we could have been sisters, where we would not have been pitched against each other when you chose darkness and I chose the stars._ )

* * *

The desert was burning on her skin and Bisca – one of the archers, one of the gods of home and hearth and family – stretched as she stepped out into the dust. She was fine, no matter how heavy the burden of immortality was on her shoulders. She was fine because she was not alone, not even in the desert town.

This was why Bisca did not understand the grief of the other goddesses: no one had ever told them that they had to give up the ones they loved most. They had made this decision themselves because they had let others walk away, because they had chosen not to fight.

The reason why Bisca slept at night and did not think of any of the other women, not of Ur in her glittering city, not of Sherry in the city that drowned her, not of Minerva in the city with grachts like veins, not of Aquarius in a city that screams life and not of Ultear in a city with its own heartbeat, was easy: Bisca did not think about them because she was no tragedy, because she slept well at night and because she did not have to miss someone who never deemed her important enough to be missed either.

(She might be seen as someone else’s addition but she had her pride.)

And this was why Bisca was better off than all of them. She had someone to catch her when the millennia she had seen where dragging her down because she had never said that she would be alright on her own. The other goddesses might see admitting to needing someone as weakness but she had long learned that the moment of supposed weakness was worth the feeling of strength that followed when waking up to someone loved instead of a too big bed.

(She was not vain enough to claim that she loved Alzack more than any other goddess had ever loved her spouse but she did love him more than her own pride.)

There were no cracks in Bisca’s foundations, she was fine and she would continue to feel well because she had never learned how to sacrifice your own happiness for everything else.


	18. like you're so perfect ;; silvur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, girl, did it hurt when you fell from heaven? – I don’t think the lady is interested.

Her day had been bad already before and the only thing she really wanted was to get some tea and scones and the _bloodiest_ lipstick she owned because it was scientifically proven that it kept annoying men away from her and, frankly, annoying men was the last thing Ur Frost needed to make the already bad day into one she could only label a disaster. Alright, so her dating life was a bit of a tragedy – no need to constantly point that one out, Gildarts – but if her only options were what Cornelia liked to label as ‘fuckboys’, she was quite content with her single status. No man beat man that made her angry any day anyway.

The careful observer might have understood that a woman who stormed into a coffee shop with a large coffee stain on her otherwise pristine white blouse while her heels made noises on the wooden floor that reminded anyone with ears of gunfire would not been too happy to be talked to without previous invitation to do so.

The guy at the window? Well, he had certainly not gotten the memo and so he cleared his throat less than thirty seconds after Ur had balanced her tray over to a free table and gotten out her pocket mirror and her favourite lipstick.

“You know,” he started and she prayed that stupidity was not catching because she quite liked being smart, “I personally prefer less makeup.”

There was a quite dominant part of her that craved to strangle him because the makeup line was not just one of the cheapest lines she had ever heard from men, it was also among the five lines that could turn any mood of hers into downright homicidal in less than ten seconds. Actually, only _‘intelligence threatens guys, you know, that’s why you are single’_ angered her faster.

But she was in no mood to actually start a fight, especially not when she had argued with the head of her research department for three hours about the budget for her next project, and so she was wrecking her brain for a reply that would shut the man down and possibly ridicule him but before she found a proper reply, another man turned around. She faintly took note of his physical attractiveness and sighed inwardly because this could impossibly end well. _Mr Tall, Dark, Handsome and Working on His Laptop_ would disappoint her and turn the already bad day into one of the worst of her live.

“Do you know something, too?” he started as he raised an eyebrow which redirected Ur’s attention from his eyes – seemingly grey but likely blue – to the large scar on his forehead. “I don’t think she cares. Neither do I, by the way. If you prefer less makeup,” he made a pause to gather the attention of even more people, “I have a brilliant advice for you – _wear less._ ”

Ur lifted her hand to her mouth to hold back the laughter that started to dwell up inside of her because this was a better comeback than anything she could have come up with on the spot. She was a woman of science and she was quick-witted but she was also what most would call _cerebral_ and once in a while, she was too focused on her research and her projects to deal with, to quote Cornelia once again, _fuckboys_.

The idiot _spluttered_ and for a moment, he looked from Ur to the other man and then, he grabbed his coffee and hurried away, flee the scene like a coward. Well, _good riddance_. Ur certainly would not miss him and she would not cry if she never saw him again.

And so she was smiling – really, genuinely smiling the kind of smile Gildarts claimed was incredibly rare – over the rim of her tea cup because _alright_ , there was a silver lining on the horizon now and she was always willed to give everything and everyone a chance to improve her general opinion. “Nice to see I’m not the only one with common sense,” she said because she was a big girl and she did not feel the need to cry and whine whenever someone else came to her aid. Chivalry might be seen as a little old-fashioned but, thankfully, it was not dead yet.

The knight in shining armour (if plaid shirts could be counted as armour) laughed before he ruffled his own hair and reached for his coffee. “It really wasn’t any of his business,” he said after a moment before he raised his eyebrow, again. “And I always wanted to use that spell.”

Now, this was getting a little unfair because as he was proving now, he had not just been gifted with physical attractiveness and the knowledge about this but also with a healthy sense of humour. And not just this, he was also self-confident enough to make a Harry Potter reference without having to really think about this. It was unfair, seriously, because she was far from being on top of her game today and therefore, she was doomed to appear as boring in comparison. And she was many things but most certainly not boring.

“Ten points to Gryffindor for that,” she said drily after a moment as she adjusted her position on her chair, facing him. She doubted that he was an actual Gryffindor – she herself was a Ravenclaw – but there was something about the reference she truly liked.

“Slytherin, actually,” he said as he stabbed his fork into the chocolate cake in front of him and this time, she could not hold the laughter blossoming in her body back.

“I’m Ur,” she said as she placed her cup back on her table and held out her hand. “Dr. Ur Frost.”

“Silver Fullbuster with a degree in business,” he said as he smirked and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, really.”

A sentiment that was most obviously shared. It had been a horrible day but he was on the best way of turning it around and she found herself very much approving of this because it would be quite nice to get out of a bad mood without having to buy tons of chocolate at the next store and feeling bad once it was all gone.

She was about to say something that might be considered funny and witty with the right amount of mercy involved when he cleared his throat, his grin ever growing. “Though I question the particular shade of red … makes me think of blood,” he said and she laughed, _again_ , as she rolled her eyes because **this** was how to make non-offensive comments.

“The comparison,” she said as she threw the lipstick back into her purse and reached for the jam, “is very much intended. Making others think of murder and bloodshed is my thing.”

He raised an eyebrow as his hand went for his cup. “Tell me when I got to back off,” he said as he nodded slightly, the message clear and well-appreciated by her. She liked it when people got that sometimes, others did not want to talk, and who did not judge.

“Oh, you’ll know,” she said as she raised her own eyebrow because he did not have any patents on this. She had been infamous for her eyebrow wiggling back when she had been undergoing university schooling and she was still up for the challenge.

He kept grinning as he closed his laptop and leaned forward. “So how do you feel about sharing a table while I see what it takes for someone to be told off by you,” he suggested as his grin faded into a smile and – she was on her best way to do the weird _love at first sight_ thing which was totally not her style as usually, she wanted to know the person she was falling for a little better.

“Sounds like a plan,” she said as she lifted her bag off the closer table. “A warning – my day was not the best.”

“A risk I’m going to … well, _risk_ ,” he said as he got up to sit down at her table with his equipment.


	19. you can see all lovers dancing round ;; sherryon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: It’s a perfect day for a wedding. Too bad that he was not invited.
> 
>  _Crashed the wrong wedding_ AU

 

Crash the wedding, his brother had said. 

It’ll be fun, Ultear had agreed. 

Newsflash: it was a nightmare. 

Of course, it had been fun at first. It had been thrilling, it had been exhilarating. It had been, just like his sister had promised, a welcome break from the usual life he led. Because usually, Lyon Vastia knew better than to crash a wedding. However, it was the wedding of someone who had screwed Ultear over and when she had heard about the wedding (after they had had a few drinks), a dare had been made and once Gray had started to egg him on, Lyon had been unable to resist it.

Especially since the promised reward for going through with it had been that Ultear would attend his first lecture once he accepted his new teaching position and ask interested questions at the end so that it would look to the actual students that he was a great professor.

(And, which was actually more important: Gray would pick up their parents after the dinner for their anniversary and this was exactly what Lyon had hoped his brother would offer.)

According to Ultear, the most important step to crashing a party was to act like everyone else. And Lyon thought that he was doing a damn good job at this. He idly chatted with the other guests, made polite conversation and made people laugh. Another important part was not to look guilty because apparently, this was what would give him away otherwise.

Two hours in, Lyon was convinced that he had this in the bag. And then, things went downhill. Texting his sister a picture of the happy couple with the question if he should step on the bride’s dress or something, Ultear suddenly grew oddly silent for her standards.

And then, she replied with: _I never saw this people before in my life._

Looking back, it was probably the expression on his face at this revelation that gave him away to the maid of honour, a tall woman with bright pink hair who had been eying him suspiciously ever since their gazes had first crossed and who now arrived next to him.

“You aren’t invited,” she stated drily as she raised an eyebrow at him while her foot tapped against the floor in an impatient manner. “Or are you?”

He had heard about her because there had been a discussion about her at the table he had chosen to eat on while he had been there and so he knew a great deal more about her than she did about him. For example, she was the groom’s best friend and according to the gossip, she was the kind of woman who had invested more time in her career than into her love life after she had been left at the altar by her fiancé which had made it questionable to many whether or not she would attend this wedding.

“Would it help my case if I said that I thought I was crashing the wedding of the man who hurt my sister?” he tried carefully as he bit his lip, hoping that she would not assume that he was trying to make it personal for her in order to get away with it.

“Depends on whether or not that’s true,” she replied as she reached for a glass of champagne. There was something dangerous and calculating in her gaze and all of a sudden, he remembered what his father had always said about his mother: that he would never fallen for her if she had not unsettled him like nothing else in the entire world, if she would not make him question everything all the time.

But unlike his father, Lyon was a rational man and this meant that he did not fall this easily.

“I wouldn’t lie about that,” he replied as he crossed his arms and met her gaze. For a moment, she looked at him like she was searching for someone in his face (likely the lie) and then, she nodded slowly and smiled faintly. Apparently, he had passed the test.

“I usually would alert security,” she said in a cheerful tone, “but I promised I wouldn’t be the cause of any scenes today so … I won’t do that. It’s their big day, after all.”

“That’s … nice of you,” he said even though he felt like this single word did not cover it. Nice was a word that had always felt void of meaning. His mother’s acquaintances had been nice. His brother’s first girlfriends who had never lasted long had been nice, too. It was a word that was used when someone wanted to say something positive but did not know what.

“I try,” she replied as she rolled her shoulder and took a sip of her drink, her face just as unreadable as her body language. “I commend you on fitting in, by the way.”

Whatever spite he had expected in her words, it was simply not there. He had little doubt that if she wanted to, she could cut someone into pieces with simple words but she was being civil, friendly even. And this was a good deal more than Lyon would have expected from the best friend of the man whose wedding he had accidentally crashed.

“Many try,” he said as he looked around the room, hoping that he would not suddenly attract attention by talking to the maid of honour but as it seemed, no one cared. “You _succeed_.”

She laughed, no artificial laugh, one that was warm and genuine. “You’re quite charming, Mr…” she ended as she looked at him, expectantly and somewhat challenging at once.

He exhaled sharply before he answered, forcing all air out of his lungs at once. “Lyon Vastia,” he said as he inclined his head, dropping his academic title once again.

Her smile did not even waver as she nodded at him before she adjusted the flower in her hair. “Sherry Blendy,” she introduced herself before she bit her lip.

“You commended me earlier for fitting in,” he said before he hesitated for a brief moment. Then, he gave himself a push and attempted to be as smooth as he possibly could be. “And it seems like most guests are dancing,” he continued slowly, “so, um, may I ask for this dance?”

“Can you dance?” she asked sceptically but she was putting down her glass already.

He nearly rolled his eyes before he remembered that she had never met his mother and that she could therefore impossibly know that Ur had wanted her sons to be flawless gentlemen. As she had put it, these were a dying race and that at the same time, they were needed in a world where most people had abandoned their good manners a long time ago. And given that she had also signed them up for martial art courses, there had been no protest whatsoever about this decision in their household.

(Lyon had been mortified about it for maybe half a year until his first real dance had come around and he had been swarmed by girls who had wanted to dance with him.)

“I’d say my mother raised me well but I think you’d comment on the wedding crasher aspect and --- just let me say this much: I wasn’t brought up to crash weddings but to dance on them,” he said with a shrug as he wondered when he had last talked this much in one go. Actually, he had talked more to this maid of honour in less than an hour than he had talked with his last girlfriend in an average day.

“You _do_ realise that you’re gambling with your mother’s honour there, right?” she asked as she held out her hand and let him lead her towards the dance floor.

“She never does anything half-hearted so I guess this gamble is one I’ll win,” he replied drily before he twirled her around. He had this covered and he would probably impress everyone. “So, Miss Blendy, you may want to try and keep up,” he jested before he noticed the gleam in her eyes. She was more than willed to take this challenge as it seemed.

 


	20. this may never start (we could fall apart) ;; silvur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: He was a mess and she has become one and they run — but if you are running from the same thing, it is guaranteed that you will run into each other. Sooner or later.
> 
> Soulmate AU

> i.  _The power of youth is on my mind, sunsets, small town, I’m out of time. Will you still love me when I shine, from words but not from beauty?_

Silver Fullbuster turns eighteen and no words appear on his wrist. He shrugs it off; it does not matter to him anyway. He turns nineteen and people start to ask, people start to look at him. He knows that they whisper about it behind his back by the time he turns twenty-two and there is still no writing on his skin.

So maybe his soul is so broken, so messed up that there is no other soul that can match his. Or maybe, his soul mate is much younger. Or maybe — and he really does not want to think about this option — she is dead already.

(Something like this would fit his pattern just fine, he thinks.)

But in the same year, he wakes up and there is a narrow cursive on his skin, the letters sharp and of such a dark purple colour that it nearly seems black.

_“I really shouldn’t have said that.”_

A part of him is oddly grateful because from the way this sounds, his match is not the most eloquent either and if she is a little messed up as well, then there is a tiny little chance for them to get this thing to work out.

But knowing what her words are does not bring him any closer to her and more time passes. And this is okay for him because there are things he has to figure out.

* * *

> ii.  _Heartless challenge, pick your path and I’ll pray. Wake up in the morning, see your sunrise loves to go down._  

When it comes to soul mates, Ur Frost is a burned child and when she wakes on the morning of her eighteenth birthday with a somewhat scrawled scribble on her left wrist, she groans and wrapped a bracelet around it.

 _“If my opinion counts, you’re no mess”_  is not what she wants her wrist to read. But then, she does not want her wrist to say anything because she knows better than most what kind of scars soul mates can leave on each other. When her mother has died, her father has never recovered from the pain and this is why she has not seen him in two years, why she lives with her grandparents.

And she knows her family history, she knows just how awful the track record is when it comes to losing soul mates and subsequently everything else and she really does not want to join the long lost of her ancestors who have ended up broken beyond repair.

(When her friends ask her about her mark, she shakes her head.)

(This shackle is her burden alone and she can carry its weight.)

She has goals and they come first and so for the next years, she keeps her wrist covered and proceeds to become the best possible version of herself. And she comes close and maybe even gets it all right but then, she crashes and burns.

* * *

> iii.  _Please take your time but you’ve got to know that I am taking sight._

By twenty-nine, he is nearly willed to give up on the entire soul mate thing. Actually, he does. Twice. He gets involved in long term relationships with women he knows are not his soul mate and he is not  _completely_ surprised when they leave him for someone who has said the right words at the right time.

He is not sure what he is supposed to say when one of them asks if he is punishing himself for something by getting involved with women who will never stay with him, if he maybe thinks that he does not deserve a happy ending.

For a moment, he wonders if he should admit that she is probably right or if he should make a joke and ask her if she was trying to steal her soul mate’s job as the man was working as a psychologist at the same hospital as she did.

In a way, he thinks that it is scary that everyone around him is meeting their match while he is still standing alone like the clumsy kid in school that always gets picked last for everything. He is even a little offended because he is Silver Fullbuster and while he has indeed been a mess at eighteen, he is in total control of everything now.

* * *

> iv.  _Oh, you look good with your patient face and wandering eye. Don’t hold this war inside._

The reason why she lets Ivan do the map mumbo-jumbo on her twenty-fifth birthday is because as long as she knows where her soul mate is, she knows how she can avoid him. She is twenty-five and after seven years on the fast lane, collecting one success after the other, her fire is out.

Her friends tell her that it is okay, that it can happen to everyone — and she grits her teeth and shakes her head because this is not fair, not after all she has sacrificed to become someone her relatives can talk about with pride.

And so when Ivan brings out the map and she blindly circles the finance district five times in red ink, her first course of action is to call her cousin and to inform him that he will handle all business involving her finances along with the family’s from thereon out.

There is a goddamn reason why she has turned out to be such a skilled doctor — she does not take unnecessary risks. And getting close to the sleek glass towers would be the very definition of taking an unnecessary risk.

She wants the happiness that can supposedly only be offered by a soul mate but she knows herself too well and she knows that if there is one person on the planet capable of fucking up a soul bond, it is her.

(And this is part of what makes her a burned child, the knowledge that a bond can be broken.)

* * *

> v.  _And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you’ve been here before?_

Something about the city hospital pulls him closer again and again. He does not really understand what it is but when he mentions it to Cornelia who works at the hospital as well, she shrugs before she mentions the  _Map Theory_. Apparently, there are ways to determine places with a high probability to locate the soul mate. And then, there are theories that soul mates are naturally drawn towards each other, making it highly unlikely to miss them.

It is Gildarts, Cornelia’s soul mate, who suggests that maybe, Silver’s soul mate has a map of her own and uses it to steer clear of him. After all, knowledge can be used in more than one way.

“Well, I get when I’m unwanted,” Silver says and he laughs but he does not feel like laughing because using the map to avoid the soul mate is exactly what he would have done a few years ago when he has thought that his soul mate would be much better off without him.

And somehow, the idea that the great mystery of his soul shares his former opinion that sometimes, it is better not to know the soul mate leaves him with a bad taste in his mouth.

(But then, this is maybe the reason why they are supposedly meant to be.)

(Who even knows everything about this mess?)

* * *

> vi.  _Here’s the day you hoped would never come. Don’t feed me violence, just run with me through rows of speeding cars. The paper cuts, the cheating lovers, the coffee’s never strong enough — I know you think it’s more than just bad luck._

She usually does not go out in the rain so the question what drives her to go for a walk on this particularly rainy summer day is a valid one. Later on, she will scoff when someone says that is has been fate and mutter that it has been karma and that is has been trying to punish her.

Because this is the day that becomes the game changer and it goes a little like this.

She walks past the florist shop where an ex-boyfriend works and as she lingers in front of the window, looking at the flowers, he appears and because they have never known when it is time to quit, they fight. Again. Or still.

(Who knows?)

Fighting in public is not her style and on a sunnier day, they would have gathered a crowd long before he  _dares_ to bring up her father. But it is raining and she ends up drenched but she refuses to back down without a good reason and so they keep hissing at each other. He calls her a mess and he is  _right_ but this does not matter, not when she hits back with far more velocity — and she can see how the light inside his eyes goes out.

She stumbles over an apology she truly means but it is too late and she only has herself to blame. And so she groans and rubs her temples as he leaves her standing in the rain.

The only stranger that has stopped to watch the scene unfold hands her a handkerchief and she wants to say that she is not crying when she realises that she is.

_“I really shouldn’t have said that.”_

The words fall from her lips before she can stop them and something inside the stranger changes. She is not sure if the electric blue eyes give him away or if the way his shoulders relax does the trick. She only knows, all of a sudden, that he has been waiting for these words.

* * *

> vii.  _You remind me so much of her when you’re walking where everything’s perfect and nobody’s talking._  

_“If my opinion counts, you’re no mess.”_

The words are out before he can stop them and she tenses before she grows still. He knows that she is his soul mate even though there is no weird sensation in his bones, even though there are no stars coming down. He just knows and somehow, this is as impressive as it would have been if there has been some sort of firework going off. It is as if the world slows down for a moment before gaining an actual rhythm. ****

She does not look the way he has expected her to and he doubts that he is what she has expected because she turns, sharply. Short black hair is plastered to her face and for a moment, he has trouble believing that she is that much younger than he is because her haggard stature makes her look much older than she is.

Her clothes are too wide on her frame, even in the downpour, and she has the desperate expression of someone who has fought a battle and lost and still keeps going because there is nothing else to do.

(He knows the expression; his reflection has shared it many times.)

For a moment, she seems to be frozen into place. There is no sound escaping her lips and if he would not see the small clouds of her breath in the cold air, he would doubt that she breathed. She reminds him of a doe caught in the headlights and then, he knows what will happen before it does.

She unfreezes, shakes off the weird mixture of shock and surprise — and bolts.

He thinks about running after her but after two steps, he stops. He cannot make her stay and to be honest, he would have done the same if he had been in her shoes.

* * *

> viii.  _But the world moved on, my illusions gone and I don’t know who to blame._

She runs because all of a sudden, it is  _real_. All of a sudden, she can no longer deny the existence of her soul mate. Because this was what she has done for years, keeping the writing on her wrist covered up and pretending that it does not exist because she is not really prepared to let someone matter enough to her that he can destroy her.

(Because this is what soul mates always do to each other: becoming the most perfect downfall.)

Her writing on her wrist burns but with every step she takes away from him, it ceases. But she does not stop running until she is back in her apartment, the door locked behind her and the summer rain hitting the windowpanes in the same rhythm as her heart is beating inside her chest.

Getting out of her shoes and stripping off her drenched clothes before running herself a path, it takes her nearly fifteen minutes that he has not ran after her — and she finds herself relieved at this because at this very moment, she cannot do this, any of this.

Because he is wrong. She is a mess and there is no way for her to pretend otherwise when she has lost more than she has thought could be possible to lose. And as long as she is a mess, she has to focus on herself and fixing herself and becoming the woman she has been, once: the best possible version of Ursea Cara Frost the world has to offer.

* * *

> ix.  _I think that life’s too short for this, want back my ignorance and bliss. I think I’ve had enough of this._

Cornelia proves to be a much better friend than Silver thinks he deserves because she does not joke when he says that his soul mate has taken one look at him before turning away and running into the opposite direction. His foster sister, he knows, would have said this but Kyouka has always been rather cruel.

“It can be scary,” the brunette woman says as she pours tea into two cups and shrugs.

“You didn’t run,” he replies as he feels how warmth floods back into his fingers.

“Maybe she is in a serious relationship,” his friend says as she opens the box of cookies with another shrug. “And the reason why I didn’t run was that Gildarts was my patient.”

“…apparently, the words I left on her are  _‘if my opinion counts, you are no mess’_ ,” he groans and he wonders if this is the kind of mark that turns into a self fulfilling prophecy.

“Did she look like a mess to you?” the doctor asks as she thoughtfully chews her cookie.

“…she did,” he admits and closes his eyes, waiting for a scolding that never comes.

“Then you made the right choice by not going after her,” Cornelia says calmly as she pats his shoulder. “Just let her figure herself out … if you’re soul mates, she’ll show up again soon enough anyway.”

* * *

> x.  _Leave me out with the waste, this is not what I do. It’s the wrong kind of place to be thinking of you._  

The most important thing to remember about Ur Frost is that she is only human and that she has scars to tell the tales of all the times she has crashed and burned throughout her life. Some marks have been left by goodbyes that have hurt more than she has wanted them to, others have been left by people who have stayed when they should have left.

And because she is merely human, she is afraid. For years, she has done well on her own. She has always worked out her own problems, she has always known what course of action would benefit her most. Usually, she has remained alone, has felt like this is the best thing she can do for herself and everyone who knows her.

And while she keeps running from her soul mate, she knows that this is the best she can do for him. At the moment, she is not capable of being good for someone else because she is bitter and a little toxic and probably unhealthy for anyone else.

Until she loves herself again and has everything back in order, she cannot let someone else love her because there is nothing pretty about the way she is being torn apart by the woman she wants to be and the one she  _has_ to be.

She is only human but she is not selfish enough to drag someone else into her drama, to let someone else get hurt on her watch. She has nothing but the best intentions and she hopes that she is not paving the way to hell with them.

* * *

> xi.  _Well,  I’m not perfect, just all messed up._

Following Cornelia’s advice and simply having some faith would have been the smart idea but Silver grows restless before the week is over. It is a small city and it cannot be this difficult to find someone he is  _naturally drawn to_ when he is trying — and for unknown reasons, he does try. Mostly because he wants to understand what has made her run away and perhaps because the whole soul mate thing apparently means to worry about each other. And a blind man could have seen that she is not doing well at all.

She is difficult to find, however, because she is a shadow. She is none of the women he finds on the Queen’s Avenue, billowing skirts and swinging their designer hand bags back and forth. She is none of the women who are clinging to their glasses at parties and laugh too loud to hide the way their eyes are empty and without the light that belongs there.

But this does not mean that she is not just as messed up at the people who whisper stories of difficult families and complicated pasts into the night to watch the words fade like smoke in the cold air. There is always a story in the background when someone runs away and he wonders if he really wants to know her story. His instincts tell him that he has to keep his distance or that he will scare her off forever but it is difficult because he is also rather curious about her.

* * *

> xii.  _What if it makes you lose faith in me? What if makes you question every moment you cannot see? And what if it makes you crash and you can’t find the key?_

Truth be told, she does not remember a time when there has no one looked at her. She has always been doomed to succeed because failure was no option for her. The pressure has always been there and it has always been heavy on her shoulders, heavy enough to make her go numb a long time ago.

“You are becoming predictable,” Ivan says over a glass of white wine, worry written into his eyes. “You may need a change of scenes.”

“I guess you talked to Goldilocks,” she replies and stabs her fork into the raspberry cake with a grim expression on her face. She does not mind her friends talking about her without her being around but she wishes that they could just let heave her alone with her problems because she knows how to handle it.

“He worries about you because he knows just how far you are willed to go to keep your pride,” the man says and she grimaces because he is too right for her to appreciate it.

Ivan has been there whenever she has needed someone. When she has returned from boarding school, he has picked her up from the train station. He has pushed her to deal with her demons again and again for  _years_ and he has never accepted the excuses she has made.

“I know what I’m doing,” she says with a shrug and prays that he does not notice.

* * *

> xiii.  _Forget me not, forget me now. I’ve come too far to turn around._

He sees her leave a restaurant and for a moment, he prays that she does not see him too because there is someone clinging to his arm and he knows that women can be rather difficult at times and that there are about nine hundred ways to upset them without even trying. But she does not see him and for a moment, he just stares at her from across the street.

She is scowling at a black-haired man who seems to be amused by her dismay if the smirk is any indication. Then, she turns away and waves at one of the taxis, her eyes sharp as a razor even in the faint light. And he realises that he does not understand her at all because while she is frightfully thin, she holds her head high. She is one of the people who break their own necks to keep their chins up and he recognises a kindred spirit in her because he has done the same.

He can respect this even though he has seen how this sort of thing usually ends, more than once. Not everyone can walk out of hell with everything intact and the dignity in place. Most people need another to offer them a hand but he gets the feeling that if he would offer her a hand, she would cut it off and make him suffer.

* * *

> xiv.  _I changed the clocks back again and ask forgiveness for my sins ‘cause I don’t know where I’ll go._  

She is a perfectionist because perfection is the standard she is measured by and she refuses to perform beneath the expectations of others. Usually, this does not stress her out but usually, she does not have to make decisions that mean more than just life and death. Usually, she does not have to choose between loyalty to her country and her beliefs. Of course, it is what kills her slowly. It is what makes her wrists thin, it is why she shudders at times, why her clothes are a little baggy on her.

And maybe this is why the arrival of her soul mate — and she feels him lurking somewhere in the shadows — unsettles her this much. This is a make-it-or-break-it-moment of her life and there is a part of her that is convinced that she will break it. This is the moment that will define her forever — and this is what will bury the near flawless version of her forever.

She will burn and she knows this. She will set fire to herself and it will be the good fire, the kind that burns away the cold and that cleanses her from whatever sins will be forced upon her.

Because in the end, she will have to make a choice that will make her hate herself a little and this is going to change her. She knows this and she wishes that she could walk away from this but this is impossible because even if she would break her own end, it would not change the outcome.

* * *

> xv.  _No easy way to say this, you mean well, but you make this hard on me._

He wants to visit Cornelia but when he gets to the hospital, one of the other doctors tells him that his friend is in the cellar, dealing with  _‘the inevitable outcome of Frost tearing herself apart’_. He gets the vibe that he is not supposed to hear this but it does not matter to him as he takes the service stairways that lead him down into the cellar.

Years after having met the brunette, he is something like an expert at navigating himself in the maze of hallways and it is easy enough to track his friend down.

_“What did you do to your hand?”_

The doctor’s voice is nearly shrill and definitely furious and he feels a hint of sympathy with whoever has gotten this reaction out of his friend because Cornelia can be very much terrifying when she feels the need to be.

“It’s not broken, just bruised,” another woman replies and the voice is weirdly familiar although he cannot place it right away for some reason. “I’m a surgeon, no complete moron.”

“People say that surgeons are sadistic but I really start to think that you’re pretty masochistic,” Silver’s friend hisses and in a faint reflection, he can make out two silhouettes. One perched on the ground, limbs folded neatly, and the other standing tall. For a moment, Silver is confused because he  _knows_  that body language and then, it clicks. He has circled the hospital on the map so obviously it would be where his soul mate works.

(Only that this is yet another very bad moment for him to actually meet her and so he walks away.)

* * *

> xvi.  _I learned the hard way that they all say things you want to hear and my heavy heart sinks._  

She is tired of everything, she thinks as she leans again the wall. She enjoys being a surgeon because it means that she can save lives. She is not overly fond of those who say that only sadists because surgeons although she thinks that sometimes, it would help if she enjoyed to hurt people.

“You  _are_ a goddamn mess, Frost,” Doctor Alberona says and Ur laughs because for someone who is supposed a genius, it really has taken the other woman a long time to realise this.

“Don’t you know it?” she asks as she pinches the bridge of her nose and pushes herself off the ground. “Anyway, I gotta get back into scrubs and get working.”

“No, you are not,” Cornelia says as she grabs Ur’s hand and squeezes it, causing pain to surge through her arm. “This is a routine surgery. They don’t need you for this.”

Ur disagrees. They need her. They need her to screw this up, they need her to burn her career and quite possibly her life — for the safety of everyone. “There’s no such thing as a routine here,” she says as she tries to walk past her friend, ready to make the hardest choice of her life.

She does not see the syringe’s silvery gleam but she feels the sharp pain in her arm and then, she feels a little dizzy because whatever anaesthetic her friend has decided to use on her, it works quickly and it leaves her staggering, fighting for balance within a minute.

“Why?” she asks but before she can hear an answer, she blacks out.

* * *

> xvii.  _And is it over now? Do you know how? Pick up the pieces and go home._

So this is not the plot twist Silver has seen coming but it certainly is the plot twist he deserves. He gets home and he manages to figure that under no circumstances he will tell Cornelia that she knows his soul mate because this will change everything and he doubts that he will approve of it. And while he tries to figure out what to do with a day off that appears to be a huge mess at this point, Cornelia calls him. He does consider to ignore the call until he knows how to handle everything but then he sighs and accepts it.

‘Great that I catch you,’ she says and there is a weirdly happy vibe in her voice. ‘I’m having some hospital friends over tonight for a little party and you are invited.’

He does not really like these gatherings because he was usually the only one (along with Gildarts) who did not work at the hospital but he knows Cornelia too well to think that he can talk his way out of this. And so, rather than to start a fight, he says that he will stop by briefly and showers before he gets changed and into a taxi that gets him across the town to her apartment. He spots his soul mate more or less right as he arrives. She is lounging on the couch, appearing to be nearly boneless, as she chatted with a group of nurses, her eyes sparkling and her laughter clear and genuine.

But before he can work out an approach better than ‘fancy seeing you here’, the hostess grabs his arm and steers him towards a group of doctors who want to know more about his job.

* * *

> xviii.  _Every day is so wonderful then suddenly it’s hard to breathe. Now and then I get insecure from all the pain, I’m so ashamed._  

She does not know what draws her to the fire stairs but her head feels like it has been filled with cotton and she does not trust herself with social interactions. And so she opens the window and climbs out, shaking out her hair as she leans against the railing and stares at the tiny city beneath her, feeling weirdly distanced from it all of a sudden — although this could easily be a side effect from the drugs. She knows why Cornelia has done it and a part of her is grateful that her friend has stepped in to prevent a minor catastrophe but at the same time, she wishes the woman would have used a sedative that would have left her with less of a headache.

“Mind if I smoke out here?” a voice asks and she turns and she remembers his eyes. There has been list of potential places for her soul mate to pop up again but she has never counted for him to be on one of Cornelia’s parties because usually, only hospital people gathered there.

But she is managed to remain composed and so she raises an eyebrow at him. “Most people around here are  _doctors_ and I assure you — the things say about lung cancer are real,” she says calmly although her heart is racing inside her chest, something she would have deemed impossible because of the sedative.

For a moment, he is completely silent and simply stares back at her before he clears his throat. “I remembered you to be taller,” he finally manages to say and she rolls her eyes because he is hardly the first to say this.

* * *

> xix.  _Your talents are tested, they’re polished and they’re shaped. Your talents are wasted on men of no taste._  

She does not react offended and she does not run away again so this is certainly a minor success in his book. Without the rain to drench her and to make her look like she has just crawled out of hell, she is more than just averagely pretty in his eyes. There is still a certain sharpness in her face but it is less razor-like this time.

“If you wonder why I’m not running, I had a really weird day,” she says as her fingers tap against the railing in quick succession, nearly as if she was a pianist.

“Can’t be weirder than mine,” he replies with a shrug, waiting for her to take the bait.

She does not, not really at least. She laughs, again, before she shakes her head at him and stills her hands for a moment before she raises an eyebrow. “Suppose you weren’t knocked out today,” she replies with a shrug and a challenging glint in her eyes and he has to admit that he is a little happy that she is no one’s doormat.

“I didn’t pick a fight with someone stronger than me today, doctor,” he replies but there is a twinge of worry inside of him and he hates the whole soul mate thing more than ever because in the end, she is still a complete stranger.

“Good call there,” she says after a moment as she adjusts her scarf and smirks back at him.

“Wasn’t that hard to guess, actually,” he says and he decides that he has to go with a lie unless he wants to tell her that he has overheard her talking to Cornelia. “That’s a pretty expensive handbag you’re carrying,” he shrugs, “so you can’t be a nurse.”

* * *

> xx.  _Here we are for a brand new start._

She decides not to rant about how unfair it is that the nurses did not earn half as much as the doctors because this is usually the topic she gets started on when she wants to get rid of someone and right now, she wants to learn more about him so that she can understand him — and maybe even why they have been matched up such a long time ago.

She is still a little scared because she does not really know how to handle this sort of thing and because she remembers all too well what happens when someone loses part of their soul. But he does not seem too scary in the faint light from the lanterns and with the sounds from the party in the background.

She can give him a chance, she thinks. She can give all of this a chance and see for herself if it will ruin what little stability in her life she still has or if it will improve her situation. After all, she has lost already. Cornelia has set fire to her before someone else has had the chance to do the same and now, she has to rise from her own ashes like a phoenix even though she has been compared to an ice princess for as long as she can remember.

“Ur Frost,” she says and it sounds like she surrenders to fate.

“Silver Fullbuster,” he replies.


	21. a slow glowing dream ;; sherryon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Why was she still trying to run?
> 
> Inception AU

 

* * *

 

_un._

* * *

She had been in Crocus for three weeks when he found her and she knew instantly that everything was about to get extremely complicated. It became obvious the moment he strolled into the little café at the corner of two busy streets and headed straight for the table where she sat in the sun, pink hair gleaming as always and sunglasses on her nose.

He still looked the same and for some reason, this hurt more than it should have. But she was no longer eighteen and desperately in love with a man who could hardly care less about her and her feelings. She had grown up and she had other goals in life than to work for him and to prove over and over that she was deserving of his attention.

She was more than that and as he had never seen it, it was his loss and not hers.

It would have been easier saying no if she was not still in love with him but it seemed like her _once-upon-a-time_ -promise to love him as long as there were stars at the sky had turned into a curse. Back then, she would have gladly sold her soul for the idea of him coming to look for her, of him telling her that she was needed.

Now, she would – _just as gladly_ – have sold her soul for him turning around and walking out of her life, for him to leave her alone with his far-too-complex-to-work plans and ideas that were more than just a little crazy.

But he did not show any mercy as he pulled back a chair to sit down on the other side of the table. “You had us running all over Fiore,” he said and she sighed.

“Get to the point,” she demanded because the faster he would dish out whatever offer he had to make, the faster she could reject it and forget that he was still out there – and she could go back to pretending that she was long past caring about him and his ambitions.

(She really was not.)

“There is a job,” he said, waiting for her reaction. “The team says they can’t do it without you so … would you consider coming back?”

She snorted and nearly spilled her coffee over her pretty creamy white dress. “How long have we worked together?” she asked as she flipped her braid over her shoulder. “Actually, don’t answer this or you will make me feel old. The point is, you know my answer to this question. I’ll not return. I’m done with the team, done with your plans, done with all the work in the shadows. Yes, I know that I said that I will stay as long as you want me. But really, I was sixteen then.”

Sixteen and blindly in love.

“It doesn’t have to be like then,” he replied as he slid the usual brown envelope over the table. “Seriously, I know that I was a bastard back then … but this time, I can keep the promise I make. I can protect you, I am stronger now than I used to be.”

“It wasn’t a matter of your strength that I was beaten like a newbie during the Galuna Assignment,” she snarled, her face darkening with the memories. “You chose not to come to my aid because you and your goddamn _man pain_ was more important to you than my life. Heartfilia nearly killed me. Granted, she had no clue what she was doing. But you know that I was vulnerable. You chose to sacrifice me for your goddamn ego.”

She had spoken up, she had finally said what had bothered her for so long and she was rewarded with the feeling of relief. It was not that she hated him for his decision, it was more that she had no longer interest in working with him. It had been five years since she had left the team, since she had started to pursue her own career. She had accepted that it would never be as funny and interested again but she could live with a glass that was half empty, really.

So, why now? Why did he have to pop up after five years of peace to barge in and disturb all she had build up? He had played her for fools once, she remembered this because she always remembered. And she did not wish to forget because there were many men like Lyon Vastia out there and she really wished to stay away from his kind.

So why was she considering to accept the offer? _She knew better._ She knew far better than to give in to the temptation that was working with the old team, again. The idea of going back was plain ridiculous, she had been so very, very happy to get away from it all. But leave it to Lyon to make her want to reconsider all of this again.

(Because she had never been able to predict him, he had always surprised her.)

She exhaled before she poked the envelope with her forefinger. “What sort of job?” she asked after a moment because she had always been too curious for her own sake. “And I swear, Lyon, if this is not worth my time, _I will end you._ ”

“Your favourite kind of job,” he replied, shrugging. “The complicated kind, the kind where you have to dig deep to get the information you want. Exactly the kind of thing you seem to have specialised in since you left the group. Don’t act surprised, you knew we’re keeping an eye on you.”

She raised her eyebrow. “I can’t believe that I am asking for this,” she muttered. “Who else in on this job? Because, in all honesty, the old team wasn’t the best one you could come up with.”

“If you are in, we have Jura as the Architect, my as the Extractor, you as the Point Woman, Yuuka would be the Chemist and Tobi as the Forger,” he said. “It would be a good team, you know that.”

She closed her eyes and thought.

She remembered the first weeks on her own, the first weeks when she had been lost, when she had had no place to go to. Lyon’s team had been her home, always, because she had once left all behind to join. It had been an unhappy time on her own, the colours of the flowers inside the dreams she visited had never been as beautiful as the ones the old Architect of Lyon’s Team, a man called Zalty, had created. And it had always rained, too, and so she had hated it, a lot.

But she had managed to pull through, managed to make a name for herself rather than being the Point Man of Team Lyon. People had asked for her, had offered high sums for her to be on a job because she had never let a job fail. Everything that concerned a job was in her head and she had gotten just too good at using instincts of others to her own advantage, playing them like dolls.

This was how she had gained the epithet The Puppeteer.

“In case that I should decline,” she started after another sigh, “who would be point man?”

“I have done more than enough assignments with you to have copied the basics,” Lyon replied as his eyes narrowed. “It would be, of course, not as elegant as using a full team where everyone has experience with what he or she is doing. However, I cannot force you, can I?”

She smirked slyly. “If the situation was less sever, Lyon, I’d love to see you try,” she said amused as she crossed her arms. “Nonetheless, what do you need me for, exactly? You and I, we know my weaknesses and my limitations. If you need me for a Second Level Dream, you can forget it.”

“Your dreams became too instable, I know, because of what happened in the Galuna Affair,” he nodded. “But actually, yes, I need you for this kind of dream. I trust you, after all.”

“Because I never failed you,” she said, her cheeks pale and her tongue burning with declarations of eternal love her younger self would have voiced. But this younger self had not been relevant for five years – she had learned to keep her thoughts to herself.

He nodded, as uncomfortable with the topic as she was. “You were the first one I ever recruited,” he confessed although they both knew how it was and how little it actually mattered anymore. “It … call me sappy but it wasn’t the same without you. You kept the team together in your own, rather weird way. It was hell after that failed job … Tobi died in the dream and Yuuka hated me.”

She flinched and threw him a pitying look. “ _Ouch_ ,” she said with yet another sigh. She remembered the last time it had happened, back before the Galuna Assignment that had screwed up so much. Back then, after being thrown back to the first level of the dream, she had had to shot Tobi from behind to get him to wake up. It had been an experience she would never be able to shake off completely. Because no matter why, shooting a friend was something she had sworn she would never do. But it had been necessary to get them all out of the mess they had gotten into.

“You see why we need you back, yes?” he asked as he rose and pushed his own sunglasses back onto his nose. “The envelope included a plane ticket. The flight goes tomorrow evening. You have some time to think about this, read the job description, sleep a night over this and … I hope we will see you tomorrow. Jura and Yuuka said they’d work either with you or they’d do it without a point man … in the end, you are still their first choice.”

Sherry smiled as she sipped her coffee. “Tell Jura I said hello,” she said with a wave. “And that I am happy that he found a decent team this time around … god knows what the messed up team we were on two years back did to my poor nerves, in all honesty, I was surprised to learn he didn’t quit the business entirely … after that job, I would have understood if he had.”

And then, after emptying her cup of coffee and throwing some coins onto the table, she grabbed her bag and sidestepped Lyon before she disappeared in the crowd. She knew that she would accept the offer. If Lyon was considering it worthy, the pay had to be good.

And it could hardly be that terrible to work with them all again.

Famous last words.

* * *

 _deux._  

* * *

The sun was setting and Lyon’s gaze roamed over the waiting hall. He spotted Jura’s bald head in the distance, the annoying dash of purple that indicated Yuuka’s position and right next to him, Tobi. He shifted his gaze, looking at the burning skies. It was beautiful, he mused, but likely in the way the twisted version of Sherry that more often than not ghosted through the dreams he spun was beautiful, in the way a forest in flames was beautiful.

Lyon remembered being younger, being the student of the probably most talented Architect who had ever breathed. Normal Architects managed to create a world, she had created universes before she had fallen so deep that thinking about her was already a painful thing to do.

And finally, he spotted Sherry – _real-life-flesh-and-blood-summer-day-breeze-pretty_ Sherry – in the crowd. For a moment, their eyes met and she nodded slightly before she disappeared from his sight. She fit into the pattern they had prepared without any instruction because this was, after all, still her team and five years meant nothing compared to the long years they had spent in dreams, stealing secrets and doing the impossible.

Lyon was no idiot, he was not Gray who danced through dreams with his jolly band of moronic followers and who never quite realised what he was doing to his Chemist – poor Juvia Lockser, falling for a moron like Gray. Lyon had always been painfully aware of the fact that Sherry had – _once upon a time and many broken promises ago_ – been in love with him. He had known and he had not cared. She was pleasant enough to keep around and smart enough not to bring it up. He had been cruel to her because he had ignored her and so it had not surprised him when she had quit the team and had pursued her own career rather than being his tag-along.

He had let her leave – or so he liked to think. In all honesty, she would have left with or without his consent because after that screwed-up Galuna Assignment, she had been done with him and his games and her disappearance had been a slap into his face which had proven to be rather helpful for his character growth.

She appeared seemingly out of nowhere next to him, sitting down and opening a magazine. “I’ll go back to my own life after this,” she muttered under her breathe and he heard in her voice how tired she had to be, how sick she was of love which had once been her favourite thing – but as she had said herself, she was no eighteen-year-old girl anymore.

“I see,” he replied as he noted the absence of softness in her voice. “How’s what’s-his-name?”

She flinched slightly. “Rena and I never got around to marry,” she said after a moment, her eyes trained onto her magazine. “Better said … I broke up things before our wedding. It wouldn’t have worked out, in the end, and I didn’t want to have to hurt him, you see?”

He averted his gaze, focusing on Jura’s bald head once again. “Which makes you a far better person than myself,” he replied after a second as the familiar feeling of guilt churned in his stomach. No matter how happy he was that she had rejoined the team, he knew that she would leave again soon enough. Because although he had learned his lesson, he would have to betray her.

Again.

But at least, he would be prepared this time around because he was betraying her faith on purpose and he knew the consequences, he knew what happened with those who crossed Sherry Blendy. He knew her and he knew the way she absolutely loathed being used for something she did not approve of. (And he highly doubted that she would understand what he had to do.)

But he could not afford to panic, at least not yet.

It would instantly cause her to be suspicious and she had to trust him blindly for his plan to succeed. He knew that she was wary, that she had not forgotten his betrayal – because he had betrayed her when he had chosen his ego over her safety. He knew that she had worked hard to avoid him, that she had cancelled jobs last minute after hearing that he would be part of the crew as well. He was the person she would sell her soul to forget – which was kind of flattering.

But, he mused, could someone as emotional as her truly stop loving someone that easily? He hoped that she had not stopped – at least not completely – because she had never questioned his decisions because she had loved him. Some sort of lingering affection might cloud her judgement far enough for him to manage to pull through with his plan before she made it all fall apart.

After this job was done, she would hate him. There was no room for him to doubt this. And it was fair and just, she deserved better than being used again and again by a man who was stuck in his past and who wanted to avenge someone who had been lost for the longest time. But if she hated him, she would be safe because she would lose any motivation to ever work with him again. She would finally be able to move on completely from what used to be a beautiful dream of teamwork and partnership – or better said, what used to be an _illusion_ of those things.

He allowed himself to look at her for a moment before he continued to speak. “It’s nice to have you back,” he said but the words were heavy on his tongue because he felt like the worst person on earth because of the betrayal he had plotted weeks ago. “Someone needs to keep those big kids in line once we go in … and I think that no one was ever quite as good at that as you.”

This was the truth and he decided to focus on truths as long as he could. It would make the final move far more painful and frankly, _uglier_. Then again, betrayal was always an ugly thing and he wondered how much time he had left before her ocean blue eyes would narrow with anger and hatred. Then again, being too nice would make her suspicious as well because he had never been really nice to her. But then again, he could not treat her like a tool either.

“It feels good to be back, too,” she replied, her voice wavering a little, before she turned her head and smiled. It was her old smile, the smile that took him back to white beaches and the blue sea, to crystal blue winter skies and empty snow-covered landscapes. This smile was the last connection she still seemed to have to the old Sherry, the girl she had been once. He had nearly missed the smile after it had disappeared when the old Sherry had turned into the tougher and wiser woman she was nowadays.

He nodded silently before he chuckled at Tobi’s antics. “You see, they haven’t changed,” he stated with a shrug. “It is usually better once Jura is there to keep an eye on them.”

“Absolutely,” she said with a nod and her smile turned into a smirk. “It has been a while since I worked with Jura but I am sure it will be great. As far as Architects go, there aren’t many who play in the same league as him … and you,” she added with a sigh. “And you aren’t in that business anymore, are you? Which is a real shame, you were amazing.”

He flinched slightly at her praise. “He is better, calmer when it comes to improvisation. And he has usually at least nine back-up plans whereas I had never a single one,” he replied. “I heard you tried your hand as an Architect some months back in a job?” he asked.

“Urgh, yes,” she confirmed. “But it seems like I am not suited for being an Architect since my ability is better suited to be the Dreamer instead of the builder. Also, Lyon, be careful. In case you are plotting something, keep in mind that it’s also Jura you are messing with. He doesn’t exactly appreciate sudden surprises. And, truth be told, neither do I.”

“There used to be a time when you considered sudden surprises as occasions to prove yourself,” he remarked as he raised his eyebrow. “Actually, this is your reputation in the business … that you accept challenging jobs because you just hate it when it’s all too easy and too obvious.”

“I was talking about the kind of surprise where someone isn’t telling the team everything,” she said as she closed her magazine. “Like it happened during the Galuna Assignment. I don’t having to change an entire plan all of a sudden just because someone decided to hide something from me. Like, well, it happened before. I don’t like facing consequences of someone else’s … faulty judgement. The thing that happened with Heartfilia was something that shouldn’t have happened and it wouldn’t have happened if you had told us the entire story beforehand.”

He clenched his jaw and nodded slowly. Of course, she was already wary enough because of what had happened once before. But this did not change much, it only meant he had more careful around her than around the others. It was weird that she was working with him again in the first place as she obviously had not forgotten the time when he had been someone she would have taken a goddamn bullet for in real life – only to realise that he held the gun.

“You can trust me,” he said and was suddenly reminded of the snake in the movie he had once used to watch with Gray when they had been far younger and far more naïve. “I wouldn’t let you run into a another knife, I promise.”

More lies, more honey on the blade he would sent into her chest soon enough.

“Can I now?” she asked quietly before she grabbed her bag and boarded the plane.

* * *

_trois._

* * *

The dream Sherry had build was closer to perfect than anything she had ever created before and so she smiled as she watched the others looking around in awe although dread churned in her stomach. She had worked with Jura before and it was easy for her to incorporate the mazes he built into the dream. Usually, Jura would act as the Dreamer because it was easier that way but for whatever reason, Lyon had insisted on having her dreaming – likely because of a prior experience he had made with Jura, something Sherry did not know about. And she would not ask, she would not let any emotions slip during this assignment. She would treat this job like any other, no matter how far more difficult it would turn out to be in the end.

But Sherry was hating this entire job and she hated the way she had been talked into working with Lyon – who had not changed at all – again. He was still not saying everything and she knew that she was likely the only one who had noticed the short moment of hesitation he had had shortly before they had completed the first level. She had also been the only one to notice the familiar faces in the crowds and the way those people moved differently from the others.

This was like the cursed Galuna Assignment, only _worse_.

And frankly, she hated the level she had created. She hated the way Jura patted her shoulder, complimenting her for this achievement because he had not looked through Lyon’s masquerade yet and she had and she not telling him which made her an unwilling accomplice. And the thing she hated the most was that she could not reveal Lyon’s secret to the team without risking that they would not achieve the objective – whatever that was.

They had reached the second level without a problem, it had been easy for them. Things were working well and Sherry observed how Lyon was getting calmer with every passing moment. At the same time, she noticed how his hands were trembling slightly which was a dead giveaway.

For this reason, she was not surprised when Lyon declared the necessity of a third level upon finishing the second level. She knew him too well, having been the first one he had ever recruited – which was something she took (probably too much) pride in because it mattered not half as much as she would like it too. She was not irreplaceable to him, not even after becoming the most skilled point man there was and one of the best dreamers in the business.

She had been right from the start, from the moment this weird feeling had crept up on her at the airport. Lyon was not only hiding something, he also wished to deceive the team – likely because it was something none of them would ever support. This was too much like the goddamn Inception they had done in the Galuna Assignment. He had tricked them then as well.

But she stayed silent as she heard Yuuka’s protest and she only continued to watch as they prepared for the next level because when everything failed, she had one weapon none of them had. She had more experience in three-level-dreams than all of them combined because lately, she had been strictly hired for this sort of dream. She knew what she had to do, she knew the rules and she knew how to bend them a little.

“…seriously, Vastia, if we go onto the Third, Limbo is only a moment away,” Yuuka said as he readied the needed devices. “And really, no one of us wants to end up in Limbo, doomed to wander around until our brains turn to mush. We can go deeper – but what are we here for, anyway? If this is another inception, I will quit this assignment here and now. We said never again.”

“No inception,” Lyon promised with a sigh. “Really, I am not lying to you, Yuuka. I learned my lesson about inception. The last time, it was necessary. This time, there is another goal … one you don’t have to worry about because I am the Extractor and I am the only one who has to know. Let’s just continue … or does anyone else have doubts about this?” he asked and looked around, his pale eyes shining with impatience – and something different, something guarded.

“No inception,” Sherry said slowly before she closed her eyes and lowered her head. She felt ashamed at her inability to tell the team that Lyon was plotting something, something that was probably extremely dangerous but this was a price she had paid before, being the most favoured confident of a dangerous man had never come without sever disadvantages after all.

“Thank you,” he said before he lay down on the couch. “Then, team, let’s go down deeper … we have all that’s needed to keep the dream stable, so don’t worry about this, yes? We will be fine.”

If only Sherry knew him not too well to hear the lie. Whatever he was plotting – and she saw all the little signs by now, he would not be _fine_. Lyon was a good team leader, perhaps the best in the scene but aside from his unfortunate habit to keep secrets, but from what she had last heard about him, he seemed to have developed a certain habit of taking the bullet for his teammates when it was absolutely necessary – and this was something that Sherry had never liked. Sure, when it happened literally, he usually would just wake up. But she had a bad feeling nonetheless.

* * *

 _quatre._  

* * *

The place was different from what Lyon had expected.

Entering the Limbo had been his objective, the reason why he had assembled his team for an assignment that had never existed in the first place. It had been necessary, all of it had been necessary – but that did not mean that it did not hurt – because it hurt a lot, all the lies he had told them, the final betrayal. He had needed Yuuka to dream the first level, Sherry for the second and finally, Jura for the third. He had needed all of them – well, a Forger had not been necessary but he had had to convince them that it was a normal assignment – because there had never been another group of people he would have trusted to get him down here and to convince them, he had needed a complete team.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he made a hesitant first step.

So, this was the Limbo.

He had expected something akin to a post-apocalyptic world, a desert, wasteland. Instead, the place was wide and green – like a garden. Ruins of buildings people who had ended up there beforehand stood tall, retaining a shadow of their former dignity. But he saw not a single person in what seemed to be a paradise. So in the end, even this place was like another dream level that had to be filled with life and ideas.

He bent down and touched the ground which felt incredibly real. He mused if the team had realised by now that he had not woken up with them after the supposed completion of the task and for a moment, he felt guilty because he had tricked them all.

“…this is it, huh?”

He flinched at the sudden voice and turned his head before he lost his ability to speak. He had seen Sherry angry before but she had never been this livid. She approached him, somehow faster than he had anticipated, and crossed her arms over her chest as she reached him.

“What the fuck do you want in this place?” she snapped as she glared at him. “If you stay too long, your brain with turn into mush and you will die. Are you suicidal?”

“Why did you follow me?” he asked as he closed his eyes, trying to tune her out. “Why did you _always_ follow me, Sherry? What was so goddamn special about me that you cared in the first place? I talked with Jura before I asked you to come back – he said you never cared about anyone but yourself for the longest time – so why me?”

In the distance, a building collapsed and another caught fire.

“When you first recruited me, you were a brilliant Architect,” she replied with a shrug and attempted to hide her thoughts behind indifference. “The dreams you built were _perfect_ … and I guess that I liked to pretend that you were perfect as well. I was a naïve kid when I joined the team, I never claimed otherwise. I think I fell in love with your dreams, with your creations. And actually, I started caring because I liked to imagine that you cared as well … which was stupid and foolish.”

“You weren’t a fool,” he said slowly. “When had you figured it out?”

“At the end of level two,” she said, “but something felt off since the airport. I met your brother’s Chemist there … she was on the same flight … stood in front of me in the queue at the check-in … and when I looked around, I saw the rest of your brother’s team … so actually, I was unsurprised to see them inside the dream … didn’t stop me from taking them out during the second level … so if you wondered why Gray failed to shot you on the third, I prevented it.”

“…and you didn’t tell the others because…?” he inquired as he took up walking.

“The dream would have collapsed,” she replied calmly as she followed him. “Although, I was curious what made you reckless enough to want to enter Limbo. This place isn’t a good one.”

“You have been here?”

“When Heartfilia killed me during the Galuna Assignment as I was on the third level,” she said as she mentioned towards some buildings and shrugged. “I didn’t forget that I was dreaming, you see? I kept the control … and flung myself of that building over there to return to life … I was never much of a creature so the limitless power you have here did not interest me at all.”

“Did you met someone here?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

She nodded as she mentioned to a entirely absurd building, one made of ice. “She is here,” she said slowly. “I have heard you and your brother wonder why her brain is still active even after those years she spend here … it’s because she figured the problem out. Time here passes fast, faster than time in the real life. So all the impression of a decade, of a century happen within seconds out there. The magic of this place is really a curse, one that kills softly. You kill your brain by playing god for too long. Which is why she build one place and then, she stopped.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone that you were here?” he asked as he frowned.

“You know how they get – remember how Yuuka refused to work with Laxus Dreyar because there are faint rumours in the business that he might have once been here … coming out of the Limbo is something hardly anyone manages … because – as they say – power corrupts,” she said with a sigh as she walked gracefully, her totem in her hand.

“I am sorry,” he said as they approached the tower that looked like it had been made of ice which was – knowing Ur’s many sides – more than likely. “But you knew that, didn’t you, right?”

“Yes,” she confirmed before she turned around and twisted the totem – a heart made of glass – in her hand. “I won’t be there when you wake up, okay? As I said, I am done playing your little games, Lyon, I probably will ditch the entire game, I might become a writer or something. I guess … this is goodbye … and please, don’t come looking for me. That will only hurt me even more.”

He was unable to stop her as she backflipped – when had he forgotten that she had once been an gymnast, again? – and then, she fell into a conveniently opening gap, her presence fading out.

* * *

 _cinq._  

* * *

She was drinking red wine and she watched the people on the streets, a faint smile on her face. It had been years since she had last been there in this restaurant but after coming back, she had been in need of a break and so she had returned to her hometown to bring flowers to her parents’ graves and then, after dressing up, she had decided to go out by herself.

She had another three weeks before she would start her new job, one outside of the business in the dream world – because she had had enough adrenaline kicks in her lifetime – and this new job would pay her bills. For the first time since the day she had been introduced to the high art of dream sharing, she felt like her life was more than just “okay”.

She was actually happy.

She had chatted with her cousin for the first time since she had left Lyon’s team five years ago and she had learned that Chelia was about to get married and aside from receiving a pretty invitation, she had also been scolded by her aunt and reminded to keep in touch. Sherry had accepted all of this because really, it was better than having yet another fight with her.

“Mind if I sit down here?” a dreadfully familiar voice asked as Lyon slid onto the other seat, facing her. Suddenly, she remembered a sunny café, only three-and-a-half weeks ago and her jaw clenched because this time, she would stand her ground and not go back.

“I actually do,” she said as she poured more wine into her glass. “What’s the matter?”

“Mom woke up,” he said with a small smile before he looked at his hands. “We weren’t allowed to see her for a while. Gray freaked out at that, his Chemist had to sedate him – pretty pathetic if you ask me. And well, uh, we saw her last week before she went to the rehabilitation centre … and she told me to go and look for the _‘girl that looks like a princess who escaped her fairy tale’_ and to tell her that she said hi … however,” he interrupted himself and smiled slightly, “you don’t look much like a fairy tale princess today.”

She snorted as she looked down at herself. She was wearing an old leather jacket a boyfriend from once upon a time had left behind in her apartment after breaking up with her, ripped up jeans and a shirt that had seen better times, too. But for a change, she did not care much about that because she had never been a vain fashion girl – unlike Heartfilia and Scarlet, really.

“Wine?” she asked, twirling the empty glass between her fingers. “And unless you want to talk me into another job, I may let you stay … as long as you pay the bill in the end, of course.”

“Really, I am honoured,” he said as he rolled his eyes. “But no, I have quit the scene as well. Gray didn’t, of course. I had a long conversation with mom … and she said that unless I really wanted to stay, she would prefer me leaving because she felt like I might end up like her … and she seems to be … scared of just that … I have applied for a real architect job, I would like that.”

“I never would have thought that you might end up leaving,” she said as she handed him the glass. “I would have guessed that you would have been scared of your brother’s reaction.”

“I got mom out of limbo – Gray owes me big time,” the white-haired man said with a shrug.

She rolled her eyes before she waved at the waiter to place her order. “You know, Lyon, you’re a funny guy without ever really trying,” she said amused. “It will be hard for you.”

“I am a capable guy,” he said as he sipped on the wine. “What will you do now? Where are you going after leaving the business? What does point man translate into?”

“Personal assistant,” she replied with a shrug. “It is not glamorous and not the greatest thing in the world but according to the faked references, that’s what I did before so I will do it for a while before I move on to greater things. You know me, it will work out for me. It always does.”

She had once nearly hated him for the way he had been so cold, so cruel. But really, it had been what had taught her to love herself more than anyone else who would never love her as much back. Sherry did not need a man because she was perfectly capable of living a happy life on her own. She needed no one to carry anything for her because she was stronger than that.

But sometimes, she wanted someone in her life, someone who would lay down with her under the wide windows of her new living room to watch the stars, never talking, just breathing. She wished for the silence because in the years of dream sharing, there had never been much silence in her life and while once upon a time, she had liked it, she thought differently now.

(Although she still did not know how she felt, exactly, but well, she would have time to figure it out, right?)

“Personal assistant,” Lyon repeated with a smirk. “Who would have guessed, huh?”

She pressed her lips together. “The Lamia Cooperation is a prestigious one,” she said, “but well, I said that I never planned on staying there forever. I … I don’t think I am cut out for this settling-down-thing .. although I really wished I was, you know? God, I am twenty-five and all I have to my name are some borderline-illegal-activities, some failed relationships and a broken-up engagement. So really, I should probably prepare myself for being the family’s embarrassment.”

“I got a job at Lamia as well,” he shrugged. “And I doubt that you’d be the embarrassment. You got a degree in something, didn’t you? So you got a little more to your name, ‘kay? I am the one who had to sit through dinner with mom, Ultear, her fiancé, Gray and his girlfriend the evening before mom was transferred … and mom was disappointed with me … she wants grandkids.”

“And Ultear and Gray cannot provide her with them?” Sherry asked as she raised her eyebrow.

“My guess is that she wants a bunch of grandchildren who all adore her and run to her when they have trouble with that respective parents so that she has a new purpose … she is done with dream sharing as well, not that this comes as a surprise,” he shrugged. “But yes, one would think that Gray and Ultear would do an amazing job at producing the grandkids she wants so much.”

Sherry nodded slowly before she smiled at him. “I would like to meet her one day,” she said. “It is probably mere curiosity on my part … but I wonder what she is like on this side.”

“You can give me your number and I can call you when she is back,” he shrugged. “Then again, we will work for the same enterprise soon enough and so tracking you down will be less of a challenge … still, I’d like to have your number … for, uh, reasons.”

She smirked at him. “That’s not a good enough reason,” she replied amused.

“I had feared as much,” he sighed. “But, um, yeah … I had a question … you followed me into limbo … why would you do such a thing? This place is … I saw what it did to mom.”

“I knew what I was doing,” she said slowly as her hand wrapped itself around the totem in her pocket, knowing that she would never throw it away. “Also, didn’t I once promise you everywhere? I may have been a foolish teenager girl … but when I make a promise, I keep it.”

“You are a crazy one,” he told her with a sigh as he shook his head. “Really, I don’t want to insult you … but, why would you do such a crazy thing? Just because of a promise?”

“I think I was never good at meeting the expectations,” she shrugged at the waiter set down the plate of steaming pasta in front of her. “I was supposed to be past caring … I was supposed to be through with you, your childish ambitions and all of that … but really, I don’t think I ever was.”

“I don’t think it’s good for you to care about me,” he said quietly, his eyes serious.

“No, it’s not,” she nodded. “However, you see, you and the team, it was the closest I ever had to a place to call home … and I think that this was what made me stay for so long … let’s face it, even before the mess called Galuna Assignment I should have left.”

He stayed silent and looked at his own plate of pasta.

“But, you see, I was happy to have found a place to belong to,” she continued, “and I actually don’t regret my time on your team … because it was no waste of time, I learned a lot, not just about dream-sharing but also about people and I think … this is what I really wanted.”

“So you don’t regret anything at all?” he asked as he raised his eyebrow.

“Oh, I do have certain regrets, yes, like being so bitter about some things … but no, I don’t regret a day of being one of Team Lyon … because it made me happy to have a purpose.”

“You were important to the team,” he said softly. “Really, you always were.”

“Yes,” she nodded and old sadness crossed her face, “I was just never important enough.”

“You were,” he replied and for  a moment, she wished she could actually believe him before she shook her head – because she could not. She had learned her lesson again and again, he was not good for her and the best for her would be to vanish from the face of the earth because she would end up hurt again and really, there had been so much pain in her life and she was rather sure that it all would fall apart – and she would die inside.

“You have always been a good liar, Lyon Vastia,” she said quietly before she raised her gaze. “But never good enough to lie to me … which is a shame, living in a world of lies cannot be that bad.”

* * *

_ six. _

* * *

The building of the Lamia Cooperation in Fiore’s prettiest city, Lilietta, was exactly the sort of building Lyon saw no appeal in because it lacked any sort of creativity, of inspiration. Then again, this was the real world and here, buildings had to follow certain rules – rules his past creations had never had to obey because in the dream world, physics were unimportant.

In any case, Lyon did not allow himself to snort at the supposedly innovative glass door as he made his way to his new office. This place was not perfect but it was real and according to his mother, he needed to return to reality and to learn how to live in it. Ur’s exact words had been “You can’t hide in dreams that don’t even belong to you all your life, Lyon” and he had known that she was right … which had hardly come as a surprise because there was no one who had been in the scene as long as her and doubting her experience would mean to severely insult her.

Hanging his coat and his jacket onto the hooks at the door, he sat down at the desk and waited for his future team to shuffle in, feeling slightly irritated because his old team – Yuuka, Tobi, Jura and Sherry – had always been extremely punctual and now, those new people were all late and he was not a fan of people who were too late all the time. It was highly impolite in his eyes.

“I apologise for the delay,” the young woman who finally stumbled in said as she dropped a stack of papers and a tray of coffee on her desk. “I ran into one of the higher-ups on my way and she asked me to get coffee and the papers as it’s your first real day, Mr … Vastia.”

He looked at her and was confused at both her youth and her bright pink hair. “It’s no big deal,” he said, hesitating for a moment as he noticed that he did not know her name so far.

“Chelia,” she supplied as she sorted out the papers, nearly pushing the coffee to the ground as she turned a little, “Chelia Blendy. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Vastia.”

He rose and took one of the coffees from the tray, carefully evacuating the rest. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to someone called Sherry Blendy, would you?” he asked with a frown.

“She is my cousin,” the young woman replied with a small shrug. “She called me last evening and told me that she will be working for Mr Justine from the eighth floor … he’s a okay guy, I had hoped that I would be assigned to his team after the spot opened up but it seemed like he heard she had had applied and then, he went and asked for her by name.”

This was no surprise for Lyon, not at all.

Freed Justine was one of the known names in the scene and from what his sourced had told him along the years in which Sherry had graced the team with her absence, Freed and Sherry had worked together for a few jobs before the team known as the Thundergod Tribe had reunited  and even afterwards, Freed had hailed Sherry the best “uh, point woman in the scene” which had caused his original point woman – a certain Evergreen Strauss – to be a little annoyed with him for a while which had pleased no one.

For Freed to come in and snatch Sherry away for himself and whatever project he was working on made sense because Freed was a bit of a bastard who liked to toy around with other people’s emotions and – to quote Lisanna Strauss – “giggle while they cry but that’s probably ‘cause he hung around Mira for too long”. Also, Lyon knew that Freed had never liked him all that much so the green-haired man probably saw it as some sort of justice.

“Freed, huh?” Lyon muttered, his brows furrowing. “What is he working as in this place?”

“He does is the head of the creative department, he mostly develops advertisements and stuff like this … also, it is said that their department have the best working climate, they go out for drinks each Friday after work and have meetings in coffee shops sometimes to get rid of the sterile conference rooms,” Chelia said cheerfully as she finally finished the sorting and dumped the neat stacks on Lyon’s desk. “I’m sure that Sherry will love working there … and Mr Justine has said that he needs someone who is good at organising things and coming up with last minute solutions and for some reason, he thinks that Sherry can do this.”

Lyon was not sure why he was unhappy with Sherry working for Freed of all people. Freed was, compared to other acquaintances (especially Bixslow whatever-his-last-name-was and Laxus Dreyar), a gentleman who would behave properly around Sherry, someone who would respect her and this was basically what she deserved because she was a good person and good people deserved happiness – or at least this was what Lyon thought.

Still, he did not know why, it just annoyed him for unknown reason that Freed had gotten Sherry as his personal assistant because Freed once worked with Laxus Dreyar and Laxus was Lyon’s least favourite person in the whole wide world so perhaps this was why it annoyed him.

Before Lyon could comment, however, the door was opened and Sherry walked in, dressed in a grey suit and her hair bound into a messy bun. She did not see him and merely headed over to Chelia, accepting one of the coffees her cousin was holding out to her. Flipping her braid over her shoulder, she leaned against the table and sipping her coffee. “Creative department is hell on earth,” she muttered under her breath, wiping a dot of purple paint of her cheek. “Working with Justine, on the other hand, is a fun enough experience.”

“Is that so?” Lyon asked, forcing himself not to sound bitter. “Morning, Sherry, by the way.”

She nodded at him. “Long time no see, Lyon,” she said before she sipped on her coffee. “Vanilla latte, Chelia? You know me far too well, I guess. Anyway, I dropped by to check in with you, Lia, because of the wedding. You said that you needed my help, yes?”

And Lyon saw the line on her forehead, the line that was barely there but he saw it. He remembered Sherry mentioning her three years younger cousin, he remembered Sherry saying that Chelia was always the golden girl, adored by everyone. He remembered Sherry’s admittance that she likely would never settle down because she just not felt cut out for something like this, a belief likely forged by the job she used to have. A job he dragged her into because she had been the top graduate of her class and rather than letting her become a lawyer or something like this, he had brought her into a world of illusions and half-truths.

“Uh, yes, but … I think I should work, right?” Chelia asked and Lyon nearly pitied her. It was obvious that the young Blendy had never experienced Sherry when Sherry was on a roll because those who had knew better than to interrupt Sherry when she felt like she had to work something out. Yuuka had once made the mistake of interrupting her once and her anger had been terrifying but then again, most women were scary when something they cared for was in danger.

“Until the rest of the team comes in, you and Sherry can chat, Miss Blendy,” Lyon sighed as he sat down at his desk and flipped open a folder. “Although, Sherry, I wonder why you aren’t at work.”

“Mr Justine – Freed – sent all of us on a break when good old Mirajane Strauss marched it and started talking about wedding stuff and so I have my first break less than an hour after starting,” she replied with a shrug. “And your team hasn’t even arrived yet? They obviously have not a single clue who you are, have they?”

He smirked over the edge of his folder. “No, they don’t,” he agreed. “This lack of punctuality worries me … I think that it is hardly becoming for a member of an enterprise as prestigious as the Lamia Cooperation … truth be told, I am disappointed.”

“Be nice,” Sherry said as she shook her head. “They don’t know you yet … but of course, being too late on the first day of the new superior shows a certain disregard for said superior.”

“You are subtle as always, Sherry,” he said as he rolled his eyes. “Say, since we ended up in the same building and all … would you mind going out for some drinks today after work? It has been a while since we just hung out and, um, yes. I was kinda worried when you didn’t call.”

He knew that he was being unfair, that she would hardly decline while her cousin was listening to their conversation because more than anything else, Sherry hated looking bad in front of her family and there was little she would not to avoid just that because she was a little bitter.

She turned her head and waved at him as a smirk grew on her lips. “It doesn’t seem that I will ever get away from you so yeah, let’s go out for some drinks,” she said amused.

“Did you just compare me to bubblegum stuck under your shoe?” he asked as he raised the eyebrow. “In that case, I am impressed ‘cause you found something entirely new to call me.”

He watched how she bent over as she laughed too hard to stand straight and he smiled slightly. He remembered telling his mother about the woman Ur had called a princess-who-fell-out-of-her-fairy-tale and he remembered his mother trying to hit him with whatever newspaper she had been reading when he had admitted to having played Sherry to achieve his dream. He remembered Ur – who had always been painfully blunt – looking at him in disappointment and saying “A woman who is willed to enter Limbo to save your sorry brain would supported you all the way – and by not trusting her, you hurt both of you” and after tuning out Gray’s smug laughter, Lyon had realised that Ur was absolutely right.

So as Sherry turned to leave after making an appointment at the designer where Chelia wanted to buy her dress, he rested his hand on her shoulder. “If you want to and if you are willed to give me another chance I don’t deserve, it can be a date,” he said quietly.

She smiled, leaned over to peck his cheek and danced away – because only mere mortals walked and Sherry Blendy was no such person. She was better, more forgiving – and Lyon liked it just that away.


	22. they’re in the wrong place trying to make it right ;; silvur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Through the dust and the dirt and the ugly, a promise has to be kept.
> 
> Reincarnation AU

 

 

* * *

_then. him._

Her hand is small and stained with red, red that oozes from the wound in her side. She struggles to stand but then she does and makes it halfway through the room before he catches her. Words cannot describe how  _sorry_ he feels because he has failed her. He is her guard but he is without a scratch while she bleeds and dies.

He has loved her, once, when they have been younger and innocent in ways they have not been for a long time now. He does remember her when she has been a girl of twelve summers who has whispered into his ear that she is _scared_ of her future.

She is scared again, now, and he just holds her the way he has done then and counts her fading heartbeats under his fingertips before he bends down his head to catch her dying words.

She asks him for a favour and he nods, tells her that he will do it. It has always been difficult to deny her anything and it is even harder when her blood stains his hands and he knows this is all his fault.

He thinks then that in another life, he could have been fast enough to shield her from all the harm this life has done to her. There is her husband, the emperor, who has never cared much for his wife. There are the people who have plotted her death in hopes that it would hurt a man who cannot be hurt this easily.

(And he loves her again, just a little, as she dies in his arms.)

* * *

_in between. them._

He reappears in her life for a moment, once, and he does not think that she remembers him (but she does). He wants to know if she is fine, if she is no longer afraid now. He finds out that she is  _okay_ but not  _fine_ and that her fears have died when she has.

(He should know better than this, should know better than talking to her like he has never met her before when the history between them is vast and filled with pain.)

She is as beautiful as the cities she lives in. She is no gleaming diamond of pureness and justice and righteousness in this life but she is still someone who can bring armies to their knees with one word. She is made of something darker now but she is still radiant because the light inside of her has never been put out and for a moment, he doubts that anyone can do it because she has always been _bright._

She recognises him but she knows that he does not want her to and so she pretends like she has forgotten his face even though it has been etched into her mind for as long as she can remember. She kisses him (or lets him kiss her although there cannot be much of a difference) and quietly wonders how the empress she has been would feel about the woman she has become.

(Little does she know, the differences are barely existent.)

* * *

  _in between. him._

He builds kingdoms, again and again, but they all fall apart, crumble to dust. And he starts to think that maybe, the flaw has been with him all along. But whenever he thinks this, he catches a glimpse of her, not long after, and he remembers his promise and gets back to work.

She remains an empress at heart, even when she walks through the night and drinks smuggled liquor. There are still glittering diamonds shining on her and she still wears red in shades that remind him of the blood she has once been covered in.

(Her own.)

(Because he has failed her.)

Once a queen, always a queen, some say. Royalty is not woven into silk, cannot be measured by the worth of the jewellery she wears. It has always been the nobility in her heart that has been what she has been measured by — and she has never come up short.

He prays that she knows that he has, once, loved her but that it has not been enough for him to turn the tables on the people who have never loved her, who have sacrificed her so that they can lead a war she would never have stood for.

* * *

_now. him._

The music is loud and deafening and he stands on the stairs, watching down on the crowd and spots her. She stands by the door, her head turned towards a pretty blonde (someone who has once been her lady-in-waiting) and she does not look like the empress of an empire that has fallen with her at all anymore.

Her eyes have grown softer, better at hiding the steel she has been made of at the beginning of it all, and her smile is a bit more cynical than it would have befitted an empress.

She turns her head and looks at him and then, she nods. There is a smile inside her eyes, now, that does not reach her lips and to him, this is absolution for a mistake he has made centuries ago, that has dragged him down and down and down until he has no longer seen the sun.

Her smile is the absolution he has needed to feel like the man he has wanted to be since he has been able to wield a sword once again and he is _grateful_ beyond words.

* * *

_now. them._

He nearly walks away when she, fever-drunk and wide-eyed, tells him that she has loved him, then, and that she is not sure if this is quite the same as loving him now.

There has been a time when he has waged war in her name, to fix what another has screwed up to give her death a meaning, but he does not know how to feel about the revelation of a secret she has kept for a long time — because the difference between his war and her words is that only her secret makes him feel helpless.

There has been a wise man, once, who has told him that true fear will always follow the whispered words of a lady who knows and then, there is no doubt that she does know that he has remained loyal to the end to her, that he has fought for her but that love has never been meant to be a weapon he wields.

She tells him that she loves him for three reasons. First of all, it is easy because she is sick and can always blame it on her fever later. Secondly, there is no one in this time and age who can fault her for the way she feels about him. And thirdly, it is true.

She is not always sure if she loves him in spite of his flaws or because of them but she decides that it does not matter because he has kept his oath, he has gotten justice for her.

(He asks for her hand, not much later, and she wonders if he is asking for the hand of the woman she was — the one he believes to have let down — or the woman he is — the one he has fulfilled the promise to — and she decides that it matters little because she is both of them.)

(She remembers thinking that he would have been a much better emperor than her traitorous husband, a long time ago, and she thinks that it will be easier with someone she can trust by her side and she trusts him more than she trusts most.)

* * *

_now. her._

Loyalty is a trait she  _values_ and it is something she rewards and so she crosses the room and offers him her hand and tries not to remember that she has last touched him centuries ago as she had been bleeding out in her own chambers and he has not been able to safe her.

(This is a brave new world and she does not have to drag her past into the present.)

“Don’t say it,” she says as she presses her other hand against his face and smiled, thin-lipped and wary of the years that have passed. She knows that he is sorry but she does not want to hear it because she is sorry, too, because she has send him on his mission.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” he mutters under his breath and she _shudders_ because it has been centuries since she has last been addressed this way. “You look … nice tonight.”

“Your Grace,” she whispers back as she nods ever so slightly at him. He tugs on her wrist, then, and whisks her away to the dance floor before they can attract the all too curious eyes.

There are a few people present who remember her as the empress and him as her knight and she does not want to open this can of worms before she knows what is happening.

She is nearly sure that they can still get it right but then he presses his lips to her knuckles and slips a key into her palm and she nearly wants to cry out that this is nothing she still wants, that the times when she has craved an empire are long over but there is something in his gaze, something that tells her that he is _relieved_ from the guilt he has felt and she cannot bring herself to turn down what he believes is what she deserves.

(Especially since he has a point, she deserves this much.)

* * *

_in between. her._

She knows that she has turned into a joke. A beautiful joke, one made of silk and diamonds and feathers but a joke nonetheless. She cannot shake off the past because it clings to her, because it runs through her veins just like blood.

(Some days, she cannot tell whether her heart pumps blood or past through her body — and whether there is even a difference anymore.)

She is aware whenever her once-knight lurks in the shadows, watching over her without ever talking to her and on some days, it makes her smile. On other days, it makes her want to take back her dying words.

It has not been right of her to burden him like this and there is a small part of her that cannot help but wonder why he has let her do this to him because he has known all along how dangerous such a promise can be and how little guarantee life has offered to him that he can indeed complete the assignment.

But she wants him to return because selfish or not, she misses him.

He is a shadow in the back of her mind, he is the bullet that is fired before harm can reach her and she wonders if he knows how much she wishes that he would do it for the right reasons instead out of the mistaken belief that he is obligated to save her again and again.

Some nights when she sits on the windowsill and stares out into the night, she catches herself thinking that he would have been a much better emperor than the man who has been the one wearing the crown, once. Because for all his flaws, the knight has never had his men start a rebellion that has gotten the empress killed.

(Some nights, she wonders if the knight, the duke has known but then, she remembers his loyalty and feels guilt and shame for ever doubting him.) 

* * *

 

 _then. her._  

She cannot remember being this afraid before.

Someone has told her that fear will kill her when she has been a young girl, barely able to grasp the concepts of the world she lives in. Someone else has patted her shoulder, only a little later, and told her not to fear because as empress, she would have knights.

(She does not think that they have meant to tell her to love her knight more than her husband but sometimes, fate has a funny way of spinning destinies of humans.)

Dying makes her feel bitter and turns her into a woman full of spite because she has not followed her family’s wishes into a loveless marriage just so she can bleed out like this. She has been promised all the riches of the world and a life filled with happiness and safety but she has been _lied_ to because if there has ever been safety for her, it has burned in the first night of the rebellion.

“Y-your Grace,” she whispers as she paints her handprint in crimson on her knight’s cheek.

(She does not think that it is right that she dies in a rebellion against a man she does not love, against a system she does not support. There is no justice in killing her.)

“Build me an empire,” she says as she chokes on her own blood, “that forgets to collapse. Please.”

(She loses consciousness but she _swears_ in a later life that she hears him whisper ‘I will’.)


	23. and if tonight ever makes a difference ;; silvur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Then I hope it’s a good one.  
> Verse: Rich People AU  
> [ Standalone ]

The _Blue Book_ is one of the most infamous clubs in all of Zinnia, but its fame has always been due to its patrons. The discretion of the staff have been the pride of the Book for ages, having attracted guests that are after more than just a couple of drinks. It attracts the upper class, the high upper class. It attracts the people who have attended the right boarding schools, who have always cherished the idea of small, exclusive things — like children who do not like to share their toys with anyone. Only that rather than actual children, they are the people who have sleek, elegant black cars that are driven by their chauffeurs.

The people who live the kind of life that can be seen in movies — the people who are so rich that it is difficult to believe they are real. And, truth be told, many of them have a way of leaving the people in their presence wondering if they were truly real or just some myth.

Ur Frost definitely feels real as she arrives at the club, wrapped into a designer coat and a warm scarf to protect her against the sharp winter winds. Once there, she relieves her driver of his duties (she would call a taxi when she felt tired), before she steps into the club — the same club she has frequented for years now, usually surrounded by her usual posse.

And as usual, it does not take long for people to gather around her. She is not really a celebrity — her father is a business magnate, not a movie star — but she is certainly known. Because she is rich. Really rich. Unbelievably rich.

But she is mostly known for her rather messy divorce and, of course, the glittery blue and white dress she has worn when she has been seventeen — a dress that has been to blame for the nickname the press has kept using ever since.

Not that Ur cares. It takes a whole lot more to gain her attention than to give her a silly nickname, and so she has never even acknowledged the nickname. Because she is part of the _royalty_ of Zinnia, and she hasn’t the time to care about the press’ nonsense.

She’s been the poster child for near flawless cooperation with the press since she has been fourteen and people have started to care about what she does and who she spends her time with. And unlike others, she has quickly understood that maintaining some kind of image is _necessary_ because the act of the peculiar child is only adorable for so long and sooner or later, it turns into a problem.

And well — her grandfather has been a politician and she has always been compared to him. Which means: it has never surprised anyone that she has learned to craft an image that makes her father’s PR people weep in joy by the time her actions have started to truly influence the way the world sees her family. And really, she has never needed to hear the lecture. She has been _born_ with the knowledge that the world wants to see her as someone smart, mature and reliable.

And she has never failed to deliver this kind of performance — mostly because it has kept her father from making a comment or two about her attitude.

And so sure, she isn’t Layla Heartfilia (wife of the business tycoon Jude Heartfilia) but she is definitely who has her trusty supporters that flock around her the moment she steps into the Blue Book. Some because they actually like her, others because they rightfully assume that getting on her bad side is probably not worth whatever brief moment of satisfaction that might initially follow.

She scans the room as she orders her first drink, sighing at some of the people who have decided (much like her) that a Wednesday evening is a great time to go out, and she mentally lines up the people, trying to find something about them that interested, truly interested her — and knocked them down one by one. Like each time she has come out to drink lately, there are the same people who simply _fail_ to get a reaction out of her that is not a sigh.

Because she counts at least three _new money heirs and heiresses_ who are flirting in a not-so-subtle manner with old money heirs, for the status a marriage with someone of the old upper class would bring, not out of genuine interest. And perhaps Ur _does_ happen to be a bit picky, but she has never had a lot of respect for people who fail to realise when they are about to be used for something that can only be considered an attempt on a social climb. Of course, it **is** a bit self-righteous of her to say this — she’s old money, really old money — but she does not think that class can be gained by marrying someone who mistakes interest in their name for interest in their person.

And so, she is more than just a bit bored as she makes her round through the room, smiling thinly at the bad jokes the oldest son of her father’s most important business partner before she finally finds one of her friends. And Ivan Dreyar (owner and most important _everything_ of Raven Pharmaceutical) _understands_ her and does not interrupt her as she rants about her work and her father (the two are irrevocably connected). Once she is done, he sighs and rubs her shoulder before he reaches for her arm and leads her over to where Gildarts Clive is chatting up a group of models, only to turn away the moment he spots them and grinning widely.

Some names in Zinnia are like fireworks — briefly mesmerising but gone so soon — while others are like suns or stars: reliable and steady enough for the city to use them for navigation. And their names are of the latter kind. Their parents and grandparents have already been important to the city, having given their name the kind of light that would never fade.

The three of them have known each other since the third week of boarding school when they have all ended up in detention for transgressions that have been rather — telling. Ivan has gotten into trouble because he has attempted experiments in his dorm room, Gildarts has been in a fistfight over a girl’s honour and Ur has attempted to stage a revolution against the menu at the cafeteria with another illustrious student, one Silver Fullbuster, but he has gotten out of detention by falling down the stairs and breaking his arm.

(To the day, no one has ever been really convinced that it has been an accident.)

“It’s gonna be a great night,” the red-haired man proclaims confidently, reaching for his drink and clinking his glass against Ur’s. “I feel it in my bones.”

She laughs as she spins out of his grasp, briefly brushing cold fingertips over his cheekbones. “You and your promises,” she chides before they all move away into different directions. Because this is _the way they roll._ Together, sure — she isn’t lying when she says she can’t remember a time when they not spoken for more than a week — but as independent units. Because they have all different objectives for the night.

Gildarts is still trying to impress and woo the pretty brunette he has met at the art gallery two weeks earlier when Ur has dragged him there. Ur is trying to wash away a pretty terrible week. And Ivan, well, is being Ivan.

(That is to say: no one has ever figured out what drives him to do anything. He just did it.)

It’s one of Gildarts’ newer friends who corners her near the bar, all too curious to hear stories about the legendary ice queen from the legendary ice queen. Only that she does not seem to get that she has not gotten that title by spilling secrets. In fact, the only one who really has her beat in terms of _talking a lot and saying so little_ is Ivan, and Ivan is an **unfair** comparison because he has kept secrets for as long as he has been able to talk.

Macao Conbolt signs up to buy her a lot of drinks in exchange for absolutely no new information about her, but that _is_ the way things tend to happen around her, and if no one has warned him, well, that’s hardly on her, is it?

She is halfway through her third drink when the world just _tilts_ on its axis and the atmosphere in the entire room changes so rapidly that Ur knows all too well who has arrived. In fact, she only turns her head to make sure that it is really him.

And _of course_ it’s him.

Silver Fullbuster is the kind of guy most people either hate or love — rich, good-looking, charming and suave. In fact, Ur is not that surprised that he strolls into this particular bar. She is even less surprised when he spots her, makes his way over to the bar where she is still sitting. And honestly, she is a million years past even the slightest hint of something akin to surprise when he bends forward, supposedly intending to kiss her cheek and getting the corner or her mouth.

All of that? Classic Silver Fullbuster. In fact, it’s so very **him** that it makes her lungs hurt.

“Frost,” he drawls as he tucks a stray strand of her hair back behind her ear, “all the gin joints in the world and you walk into mine.”

When she has been sixteen, she has found him to be charming and endearing. Now, a few years later, she thinks he’s a danger to everything she stands her. Not that it makes any difference to her. She has always liked to live dangerously.

“I see you’re still a scoundrel,” she says as she rolled her eyes at him, waving playfully at Macao and disappearing in the crowd once again.

It’s not fair of her to call him that, but it has not been fair of him to strut into the room and make it his just like that either. And sure, neither of them was going to win any prizes for fair play anytime soon, but she was sure as hell not going to let him win. And the thing is — right now, Ur does not care very much about how Silver feels about her moods, about her attitude towards of him. Because right now, she wants another drink.

She knows that at least half of the people in the club currently care _far too much_ about her brief interaction with the black-haired man, because most of the patrons have been in town long enough to be at least vaguely aware of their old relationship. And she also knows that quite a few people are somewhat convinced that they still have something going on. Because people are dumb and she could deny any current entanglement with the man until she got a blue face and they would still believe they were sneaking around.

And it really was not worth the effort in the end.

But she has not decided to go out to waste her time musing about what the hell has possessed Silver to come to the Blue Book the same night she has. Because it is one of the most popular places in town, and it is not like she owns the place. Although — that is possibly and interesting future business venture. Definitely one she would have to look into later on.

She has never stayed alone for long when she has been younger, and this has not changed. Because less than two minutes after she has left Silver and Macao at the bar, Gildarts appears next to her — scruffy-looking and possibly more than just a little drunk. But that’s nothing new for her.

“Heard Fullbuster’s here,” he mutters as he wraps one arm around her and spins her around to the beat of the music, his infuriating _I-know-something-you-don’t-smirk_ firmly in place. “If you wanna get out, just say the word.”

Only that he knows that she is going to stay, especially now that he has offered to help her with her _escape._ She has always been stubborn and she has never liked the idea to surrender — especially not to someone like Silver who really likes  to mess with her head a little each time he gets the chance. Which is frankly not that often — because they are serious adults now and this means that they have to behave, especially in public. And as neither of them would currently benefit from a revival of the old rumours, it is hardly a surprise that they have tried to avoid them.

“He’s here, yes,” she says with a shrug, her voice as casual as she can keep it. And it is not even that difficult; she hardly minds the presence of someone who can attract and keep the attention of the entire room as easily as Silver can. Because this keeps the people from looking at her — and she is hardly after a lot of attention right now.

“And people have been saying he kissed you,” Gildarts finishes, and she realises that this is why he has decided to check up on her, to make sure she is not going to do anything dumb out of a sudden burst of frustration. He knows her annoyingly well.

She shrugs again, keeping her eyes from trying to spot the man in question as she reaches for her glass. “He’s being his usual charming self,” she says drily, wondering when exactly Silver has gained the reputation to be _all talk and no action,_ because that has to be a fairly recent thing now that she thinks about it.

Not that she really cares what has caused this shift, why the city’s biggest charmer is suddenly no longer following through once he has gotten a woman interested. She is just taking note of this change because once, this has been one of the things to count on — champagne at that newish hotel in downtown is never cold enough, the planet is round, Silver Fullbuster is a flirt.

“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Gildarts asks, but his voice is light and teasing. She’s happy about that and sighs in relief before she pushes his glass into his direction. She is not sure if she could handle a conversation about her ex right now. Especially not when it is pretty much _The Ex_. Which is funny, considering that she has been married until three months earlier.

“It’s not really rocket science,” she replies as she wonders why exactly Gildarts has brought this up. Usually, he knows better than to try and drag her into a conversation about her feelings, but apparently, something is very different right now.

But then, it all clicks in her head the moment Gildarts keeps talking, not even bothering to ask her if she has any designs on rescuing Silver from the women who are flocking around him, hardly interested in what he says and all too concerned with the content of his wallet. Because Gildarts knows that Ur has no qualms to let Silver deal with the messes he has made for himself and to watch how he tries to set things straight. Gildarts is walking down Nostalgia Lane tonight — and that has never been a good place for him to be.

“No one messes with you and Fullbuster. You guys are like, fuck, some kind of institution.”

She knows that he talks of the past, of what they used to be. Because at the present, most of her interactions with Silver consist out of holding the elevator for him when he yells across the hallway for someone to do that and perhaps some small talk. And that’s not really _I got your six_ power couple material. But she knows that Gildarts remembers that **once upon a time** _,_ Silver has been able to read her just as well as she is still able to read him. **Once upon a time,** their relationship has been a near perfect symbiosis because their qualities have highlighted one another.

(And there it is again, the traitorous thought that maybe, the failure of her marriage has been because she has not been with the right partner.)

And the worst part is that she is pretty sure that a lot of the people who have been to the same boarding school as they have _still_ view them as the people who get stuff done and only start caring about the consequences when the price outweighs the benefits. She still laughs, not exactly happily, because this is not what she has wanted to be — the Queen Bee of the lost people between twenty and thirty, but she has learned to take what she can get. And it’s not like Gildarts is wrong, and it’s certainly not the worst she has heard tonight.

She looks across the room, smiles into Silver’s direction as he downs another shot. For a moment, he looks up and their eyes meet — eyes that should never have grown that damn tired. He shrugs at her before he moves across the room, his movements steady even though she can smell and taste the alcohol in his breath the moment he comes close enough to wrap his arms around her.

They have past, past she should not think about after her third drink and past she should definitely forget about before her fifth drink, but she is the last one to deny that a part of her will never stop wondering what could have been if they had tried to make it.

And she sure as hell should hate him the moment he snatches the lemon slice out of her drink, bites down on it and calls her **babe**. Because, hell, they have not been _that_ kind of thing for a long time now.

To be fair, he asks her a full question — “What’s Clive been saying, babe?” — not that this makes it any better. If anything, it puts her on the spot. If she answers, she gives him a free pass to keep calling her something he has not even called her when they have dated. If she ignores it, if she ignores him, she gives him the satisfaction of knowing that his words still have power over her. So — she cannot really win this one.

But Gildarts answers for himself, because this is a very Gildarts thing to do, and he points at the two of them before he grins, showing far too many teeth. “You two?” he shrugs, one eyebrow raising far too high. “Safer than gold.”

Ur likes the sound of that.

But she is not sure if she really likes the idea of being _Silver and Ur/Ur and Silver_ ever again. It has been nice when she has been a couple of years younger, but she feels like she should have outgrown the time of her life when she has been the one person in town to openly defy the Fullbuster heir’s wishes _and_ live to tell the story. The story that has quickly been exaggerated by pretty much everyone.

Sure, they have been great together — his instincts and her distanced observations — but she has never been convinced that they would be able to take this into the real world, and by now, the real world was all they really had.

But as is always happens when they are in the Blue Book, they spiral away from each other. She watches how Gildarts _finally_ approaches the woman he’s actually interested in, she watches how Silver parades around, showing off that he is probably the best-looking bachelor in the place (but only because Ur has not counted Gildarts among the single men since she has seen the way he looks at the art gallery woman). And she smiles, because she has a lot of concern for whatever her closest friends do with their lives. But as long as they seem to be happy, she does not worry very much about them.

To that, she orders another drink and when she turns to the side, she is _tackled_ into a hug by Layla Heartfilia who has been a rare guest in all kinds of places that are not five-star-restaurants since she has gotten married. For a moment, Ur feels somewhat bad — she has not really stayed as much in contact with her old roommate as she would have liked to — but Layla is still as warm and kind as she has always been and _eradicates_ all negative thoughts in her presence.

“You look great,” the blonde says, sunshine and gold radiating from her as usual. But Ur has long learned not to feel threatened by this, because just because everyone likens Layla to the sun, it does not mean that the moon is any less admired. Just by other people.

“Thanks, Lay,” Ur says with a smile as she leans against the wall and looks at the other. They meet rarely, these days, because Layla is the wife of someone Ur’s father attempts to crush and so the official meetings between the enterprises had the tendency to be more than just a little tense. Not the kind to invite the other CEO’s wife and try to act like everything is nice and civil when, really, it is just another form of war. And Ur does not really like that she is on the other side in this. Especially since her father is the one who is taking it too far by now.

“Sooo,” Layla drawls in a whisper that might be better placed in the context of a conspiracy, not that Ur is really complaining. “Heard you and Fullbuster are getting cosy again?”

Of course she would want to hear all about that. After all, Layla has had a front row seat to the original Silver-and-Ur-show, because that has been _a thing_ when they have been to boarding school. And this means that the other knows probably more about it than Ivan and Gildarts. And this is not necessarily a good thing. Because Layla is stubborn and does not stop asking about things until she has gotten all the information she has been after.

And Ur knows that Layla would prefer for her to get back together with Silver. Because the blonde has never approved of the whole Bane business — and she has been right with her assessment that it would be something Ur would regret forever.

“He was being, well, Silver,” Ur shrugs as she takes a hesitant sip of her drink, as she chooses her next words carefully. “Nothing special.”

And this is what she has to remind herself of before she stumbles into her next man-induced mess. Because really, getting involved with Silver has always caused her to get caught up in the mess that tended to surround him.

“He’s always himself around you,” the blonde says with what has probably been intended to be an apologetic shrug. But, in reality, it comes out rather weak. Because Ur knows her former roommate, knows that Layla was going to push her back into Silver’s direction until the day she dies.

But while Ur nearly wishes she could claim that Silver being Silver was the problem — she knows that it is not. In fact, the way Silver has always been unapologetic about who he is and what kind of person he has always been has typically been the reason for her to like him. There has never been much honesty around these parts of town and so he has always been a ray of light for her. Not that she is ever going to tell him that.

Even after her divorce — she has still some pride left and would prefer to keep it.

“Because he still lives in a world where we’re — seventeen?” Ur asks with a near exasperated sigh. Because she does not want to have this conversation with anyone and especially not with Layla. Because Layla is someone who gets more information out of Ur than she wants to share with the world.

“Hey,” Layla says with a near mischievous grin, one that does not really belong onto her face, even though it has been there before — usually when Silver has convinced her to do something. “You’re the one who said that getting over him is nearly impossible.”

It is true that she has said it. And even _what_ she has said, years ago, it true as well. But in her defence, it was difficult to get over someone who has never _not_ been obnoxious about the way he believes that the world is his for the taken — and about the way he attempts to get exactly what he wants when he wants it. Yes, everyone who has ever called him an arrogant asshole is probably right but — he makes it look _so good._

Especially in the eyes of someone who has him allegedly wrapped around her little finger. Only that she does not notice that all too often, because he is pretty sneaky about that.

Doesn’t change that she knows she only has to snap her fingers to have him running towards her. But _that_ doesn’t change that she does not snap her fingers. If he wants to come running, he can do that on his own volition.

“I’m not sure if I can do this again,” Ur confesses, even though she is pretty sure that if there is the right reason for her to do so, she can do pretty much everything. And _everything_ included, per definition, another try on being with Silver Fullbuster.

Layla has the nerve to pout and to sigh _dramatically_ before she rests her hand on Ur’s bare biceps. “The two of you are gonna be the end of me,” she declares and with a _twirl_ she disappears in the crowd, leaving nothing but flowery perfume and silver bell like laughter in her wake.

Now Ur really needs another drink. Her fourth, if she has counted correctly, but that is just fine with her because she knows how much she can handle and until she starts acting out. And the _danger zone_ for that is not going to be relevant until she has had her eighth drink. And so she is drunk when Ivan appears next to her, looking even paler in the artificial light. In fact, she nearly calls him a vampire before she realises that this would be more than just _kinda_ offensive and stops herself.

“What are we gonna do with you?” the black-haired man asks as he pushes a glass of ice water into her direction. He is a good friend, she knows that, but she also knows that he’s only looking out for her because Gildarts asked him to, because Gil’s been pretty nervous about the prospect of her doing dumb stuff.

Like hooking up with an ex — and she’s counted at least four of them since she has arrived so maybe, Gildarts’ concern isn’t that unjustified. This time around. Only that Ur isn’t really _feeling_ the concept of doing dumb stuff right now. Because she is a bitter divorcée in her early twenties who really wants either a much stronger drink _or_ some chocolate — the indecisiveness in regards to that being nothing new.

She looks away from Ivan, scanning the crowd, and groans. They are not really a lost generation, but a lot of them have gotten married too young or for the wrong reasons. In her case: both. She has been eighteen when her father has asked her how she felt about marrying for the sake of the family.

And because she has been eighteen (and a fucking idiot but that’s the same, right?), she has shrugged and mused what could be the worst possible outcome. The answer: Bane Milkovich. Her ex-husband and the curse of her existence.

Her life is ruined because of him, because of the way she has sacrificed four whole years of her life to that cheating, lying _barbarian_ , and she hates that her way of dealing with this is by slipping back into the embrace of her boarding school friends, because they have understood her when she has been fifteen and now, at twenty-three they still understand her much better than most other people.

She downs the water and shrugs, pointing into the direction of the jukebox. “Maybe change the song?” she asks with a frown, only now realising that the song that is currently playing is the same that her ex has played a lot and she really does not need that right now.

Ivan shrugs, visibly unimpressed by her lack of an attempt to even try and dissuade his concern, but he is used to her being a bit complicated. And she likes to thing that he sticks around because she is not one of the people who fall into line the moment someone claps.

“I got you,” he sighs after a moment of silently judging her before he ruffles her hair and disappears in the crowd. And true enough — the song changes to something more bearable by the time she reaches for her next fruity cocktail. Not that she even likes that stuff.

Of course, drinking with Silver Fullbuster somewhere in the orbit is a dangerous game for Ur Frost, but it’s also one she has perfected before she has hit legal drinking age. It is nothing she is even remotely proud of, but at least she hesitates for a full minute before she starts on her fifth drink. She knows — she’s going to lose quite a bit of culpability the moment the alcohol of this drink floods her system, but she is not here to do business deals anyway.

But while she is still wondering about whether or not she wants to get that drunk, her eyes flicker across the room and meet Silver’s as he is doing what he (supposedly) does best: charming some young heiress.

She is not mad about that — they haven’t been dating or even been emotionally attached to each other _for years_ — but she knows that if Silver breaks another girl’s heart, his reputation will suffer, and she does not think it can take another hit after the debacle that has been his divorce.

And she’s a loyal friend and in a friend-way, she definitely still loves him. Which is why she downs her drink, squares her shoulders and waves at him.

He abandons the other girl who glares at Ur, blissfully unaware of what kind of bullet she has just missed, and once Silver reaches her, he wraps his arm around her and grins in a way that makes her consider whether or not it may have been a good idea to be a good friend for him when he is so obviously _keen_ on sabotaging himself.

“Already on your fifth drink, aren’t you?” he drawls with that pretentious Mid-Fiorean accent he has taught himself to cover up that he is, much like her, actually from the North of the country. “ _Interesting._ ”

“Had a couple of bad days,” she shrugs as she wonders how much longer it will take before the usual consequences of the Fifth Drink hit them and leave her with a whole new mess to clean up. And she sighs because she knows she should care more about this _but doesn’t._

And she swears she hates him when he pats her head and whispers that she shouldn’t despair because he has arrived to save her day _and_ her week. But he usually keeps his promises and she needs some cheering-up so it’s rather _whatever._

“Tell me about your bad days,” he says as his lip curl upwards, and for a moment, she really understands why so many people compare him to smoke. Because he _is_ there, she cannot deny that, but she also knows that her hands will be empty the moment she tries to grasp him. But that is precisely why she has never tried to close her hand around him.

“Buy me a drink and something to eat and I’ll consider it,” she says drily, but it’s not even a challenge because, as everyone knows, Silver Fullbuster can afford to buy the whole club if he wanted. So it’s not really an attempt to see how much her story was worth to him; it was an attempt to see if he was going to see this as an invitation.

Only that she has never been really sure if she had actually _meant_ to give him an invitation, or if she was actually trying to mess with his head just as much as he used to mess with hers. Because, seriously, she deserves at least a taste of revenge.

“Sure thing, Winter,” he mutters before he gestures into the direction of the bartender before he drags her to one of the empty booths. And she really wishes that she could hate the distinct air of _arrogance_ that surrounds him, but she has known him for too many years and so she’s more or less immune to it.

“I wanted to buy the hotel,” she tells him as she sits down on his lap, thoughtfully selecting what snack she would eat first. She knows that he knows what hotel she is talking about, because there is only one hotel she has ever cared about.

She also knows that everyone is watching them, all too curious what would happen next. But she is near painfully aware that nothing is going to happen, because they are _so over_ their old fling. They have grown up, they have taken their places in society. They are no longer in a position where they can do the teenage thing of driving a fancy car into the sunset.

But she has had a thing with him long before all the models and actresses have come along and for teenage standards, it has been pretty damn serious and they still have a lot in common — such as a preference for hard liquor and old buildings. Which is why she is sipping whiskey as she is sitting on his lap and telling him about her ruined plans.

He snorts disapprovingly before he reaches for his own drink. “Didn’t your father make his money with a hotel?” he asks before he smirks knowingly at her. He knows, better than most other people, that she really, really _hates_ her father. And that she also loathes everything her father stands for, but especially the way she cannot always _deny_ the way she is slightly impressed by her father’s success. Because that _is_ impressive.

“My grandmother, actually, made her money with a hotel,” she replies, a bit too cheerful for her own taste, but she really does not want to talk about her father, unless she is either perfectly sober or much more drunk.

The thing is — everyone she’s friends with _adores_ her grandmother, because she has kinda raised all of them as she has a summer house near their old boarding school and she has spent a lot of summers there while her father has travelled the continent. And while she has been there, her friends have been there as well.

“One of the last great divas,” Silver says with a fond smile before he waves at the bartender, ordering another drink for both of them. He knows her limits when it comes to drinking, perhaps even better than she knows them.

“She is, yes,” she admits without any bitterness. Because when she has been born, the era of pearls and cashmere and Chanel N°5 and fur has been pretty much over. There have only been very few women who have been able to pull this _classic luxury life_ off — and her grandmother has been one of the select few. Meanwhile, Ur has always been more of a somewhat aggressive go-getter, speaking three languages flawlessly by the time she’s been eleven, taking piano and dancing and martial arts classes and being simply as competent as it has been possible for a girl her age. And she has liked that kind of life, even though she would always miss the glamour of days she has never lived in.

Around them, the music is blaring and loud, but they used to be the king and the queen of this scene, and they are more than just used to be a bit of noise — they thrive on this kind of chaos. In fact, it reminds her a bit of a music video, especially when he presses a kiss against her collarbone. “I actually bought the hotel,” he whispers, and she wishes that she felt betrayed or something. But she does not. Of course she does not. Because it makes sense — and the only person she feels deserves the hotel is Silver anyway, because he _gets_ what it means to make something more modern without ruining it in the process.

“You should invite me one day,” she says as she wonders if this is what their past will always add up to — too much alcohol and too much physical and emotional closeness that has never lead them anywhere even remotely useful. Because for all the things they know about each other, they know nothing about making it work out between the two of them.

“I’ll personally give you a tour,” he grins as he absentmindedly toys with the collar of her dress, something else that is a rather Silver thing to do. Which is why she does not even bother to point it out to him, especially since she does not even mind.

“You aren’t gonna be called subtle anytime soon, scoundrel,” she sighs, but there is a dangerous glint in her eyes, a glint that has indicated the doom of countless men.

“Only with you, Winter,” he grins and then, in a blur, she is whisked away by an old friend from her university days who wants to chat and catch up. And she is tired enough of the game she is playing with Silver — a game neither of them can ever win — that she just keeps chatting with more and more people, clinging to the glass of whiskey he has bought her while slowly sobering up because Gildarts and Ivan keep handing her water. Because they are concerned and care about her just as much as she cares about them.

And slowly, she tires. It is not that social contacts drain her energy (only that sometimes, _it is_ ) but it is getting either late or early, and the Blue Book has been emptying within the past half hour. In fact — she can spot neither Gildarts nor Ivan when she takes her jacket. And then, it is three in the morning and she is waiting for the taxi that would get her back to her empty penthouse apartment in midtown, but as she breathes in the cool night air, she concludes she’s happy that no one is waiting for her, that her marriage has remained childless.

The worst part about this: she would like to start a family at this point of her life, but she just isn’t going to settle for an asshole like Milkovich ever again. And most of the guys she knows are either pretty much the same, not interested in settling down or already married.

It does not really matter, anyway. The moment she would get truly desperate for a new husband, she could always take the matter to her father who would surely be able to track down an eligible and marriage-inclined bachelor. Only that she has her eyes on someone specific, on someone who has probably _not_ his eyes on her.

She briefly regrets that she has stopped smoking such a long time ago, but she thinks that if she were to smoke now, she would add to the dramatic flair of the current situation and she would really prefer to just go home and sleep for a few hours.

“Winter,” a voice behind her drawls and she is not even surprised when someone is embracing her from behind, his somewhat chapped lips pressing against her temple. She is even less surprised to smell a far too familiar mixture of smoke, whiskey and cologne when she inhales. After all — he has given himself away the moment he has dug up that old nickname from ages ago. “Going home already?”

And for a moment, she _entertains_ the thought that she might have been wrong. That maybe, he has his eyes on her, just like she has her eyes on him. Because she has never been able to look away.

“Got an early meeting,” she says with a shrug, trying to keep it casual and failing somewhat pathetically at it. Not that this is a surprise either; she has never been very good at keeping things smooth when he has been this set at making her reveal the parts of her heart she has locked away a long time ago — for good reason.

Because he tends to make things messy for her, and she has not just dug her way out of another ex-husband-induced scandal to let him stir up things in her personal life again. Especially not when she remembers what it has used to be like when they have been younger.

He makes a noise that could mean nothing or everything, ruffling her hair as he wraps his scarf around her. “It’s always nice to see you,” he finally says, and she rolls her eyes. They see each other a lot, now that they are accepting the responsibility they have been born into about two decades ago. But she knows that it does not count when they see each other at meetings or in fancy restaurants — because that’s when they are both playing the part of the rich kids who have finally accepted the necessity of growing up.

“I’m not the only one who plays the avoidance game these days,” she says drily, but she looks away from him. Because she knows why they are both careful with the way they behave in public. After all — they have been the most watched couple when they have dated. And this means that the public has not forgotten that they has been a ‘them’, a long time ago.

“Don’t be unfair,” Silver replies as he freezes up behind her, his hands stilling on her shoulders and weighing her down.  “You’d hate for me to get _physical_ in public.”

“Of course I would,” she admits as she turns and wraps one arm around him, wondering if she can chalk this up to the alcohol that is still in her system, even though she knows the answers all too well; he has never been lying when he has said that she cannot really resist him and that it makes absolutely no difference whether or not alcohol is in the mix, because she has _a real weakness_ for him.

“It’s always nice to see you out of your shell,” he says, his hands still on her shoulders. Because they have never liked to let go of each other — in no sense of the word.

“You want some coffee?” she asks before she can stop herself. Her eyes both challenging him to agree and pleading him to decline. So yeah, maybe it is justified that people claim that she tends to give rather mixed signals. It’s not like she has a choice in that.

“You used to say the way I drink my coffee is an insult to coffee everywhere,” he replies with a slight smirk. She hates his ego, and she hates his expectant gaze, hates the way they both know how this will play out, hates the way they have been going around in circles ever since they have met. Because for some reason, neither of them can even hope to escape the mess they have made when they have been young and foolish.

But the final call on this is, as usual, hers. She can walk away from this and pretend that she has not noticed that he is looking at her _like that._ But she knows (and she knows that he knows) that this is not going to work out. Because it would make a liar out of her and she has never been much of a liar.

He gives her the option to withdraw the invitation to follow her, to be important in her life again. And she knows — if she was smart, she would take this out. But —

“You coming?” she asks as she opens the door of the taxi.

And she does not even have to look over her shoulder as she leans forward to give the taxi driver her address to know that he is making his way around the car to accept her offer. Because, as the world likes to forget: she is not the only one with a weakness for the other.

“Always, Winter,” he says as he sends her his possibly most dazzling and therefore most unnecessary smile — unnecessary because he has dazzled her a long time ago and has never given her the option to undazzle herself.

“We’re both done for if the press hears about this,” she sighs, but she would be lying if she claimed that she actually cared about that right now. Because even though it does appear otherwise at times — the press does not rule her life. And as she has managed to get out of her divorce with her public image intact, she guesses that she **can** do this as well.

She _is_ pretty sure that she has lied to Layla and that she can do this again.


	24. the one love we haven't screwed up (completely) ;; silvur

Ur's eyebrow twitched as she stared at the sign, taped to the wall of the elevator. To an observer (that luckily did not exist), it would have seemed like she was trying to change the words the sign read through mere strength of will — also known as stubbornness — but then, she tore the sign off the wall, crumbled it and shoved it into her bag before she stepped out of the elevator.  
There were things she was willed to deal with, right now, and one of her neighbours taping signs to the elevator walls was not on that list. Especially since it was not like they were telling her something new.

_To the lady in the penthouse — ever considered to dump your boyfriend?_

The woman's fists clenched in her pockets. Yes, she had considered it. They had never had much of a spark to begin with, but more recently, it seemed like even the smallest compromises took ages to work out, making it a very exhausting relationship. It did not help that her job was just as demanding as it had always been, requiring time and dedication of her. And yes, she could even admit that she was hiding behind her desk, that she attempted to use her projects as a shield, as an excuse to spend less time with her boyfriend. Because she knew that she would snap any day now — and that this would mean a whole new level of trouble for her.

This was the last time, she swore as she flagged down a taxi, that she would ever date someone on her father's recommendation. Because sadly, her boyfriend was one of her father's most trusted employees and this had meant that most of their relationship had been for show; she was a stepping stone in his career and he was a way to temporarily appease her father for her. And she knew that if her father would have say in the matter, she would find herself reduced to trophy wife status before long — and that was the last thing she ever wanted to be.

"Looking grumpy," her colleague, Gildarts Clive, said as he opened the taxi's door for her with yet another ironic bow. "Did mystery neighbour strike again?"

Ur groaned as she handed him the crumbled paper. "I'm surprised to see you still in town," she said as they walked across the place in front of the skyscraper that housed Frost Industries. "Thought you'd be back in the rain forest by now."

"Ur, Ur, Ur — you know I love you, but you haven't been listening properly lately," the man next to her groaned as she reached for her keycard to unlock the door that led towards the laboratories. "I told you I won't leave until after the party."

She grimaced as she threw her full weight against the heavy door to open it and ran a hand through her hair. "My bad, I'm a little sidetracked these days," she muttered as she reached for one of the white lab coats and handed him the other. "But if you're staying, we can grab lunch today? We rarely get to do that."

Because while she was usually tied to headquarters, he was travelling all over the world, rarely found in the same place for more than a few days. It made it sometimes difficult to maintain the bond they had had since their university days, but their friendship was a bond that deserved the effort Ur put into it — especially since Gildarts was one of the most honest men she had ever encountered. And honesty was a rare and precious thing in her world, a world inhabited by people who dealt in lies and specialised in half-truths.

"That's true," he said and sighed deeply, slipping into the lab coat that still looked weird on him, perhaps because even though she had been there when he had become Doctor Gildarts Clive, she still thought of him as Gildarts, the boy with the bruised knees that liked to run around in woods and to jump into lakes, all to explore the nature. That part of him had stayed and she was eternally grateful for it. "Still, today's bad," he continued as he smoothed invisible wrinkles out of his coat. "Someone else asked first."

She pouted as she tied her hair up into a spiky ponytail and tamed her messy bangs with approximately ninety hairclips before she caught the case of safety goggles he threw her. "Sometimes, I nearly feel as if you no longer love me the way you used to," she complained as she stepped towards her work bench and he laughed and things were good and comfortable as they lost themselves into their usual work.

These days, she appreciated her friendship with Gildarts more than she had when she had been younger. Not only was there a distinct lack of people who would follow her into the hell that was Frost Industries, the few who had stuck with her that long had left her a long time ago. But he had always stayed, a loyal, steadfast presence in her life — someone she had been able to count on without ever having to doubt him.

And she knew that Frost Industries, a place just as cold as the name suggested, was no place for Gildarts and that he was only staying because he did not want to be another person who abandoned her when she needed him. He was a better friend than she deserved, but he had never let her feel bad about this. After all, life under the influence of Octavian Frost was life under a permanent raincloud, life that always felt controlled. With Gildarts in the orbit, it was easier to deal with the CEO's general nonsense.

And there was always a lot of nonsense happening, something Ur knew better than anyone else because Octavian Frost was her father and this meant that she had always had the first row seat to whatever he got up to. And frankly, sometimes, it was something she had loathed because she had not always wanted to see how much he compromised himself to get what he had set his sights on.

But thoughts like this had never gotten her anywhere at work and so she pushed them aside, until Gildarts left for lunch and she groaned, finally deciding to take the reports of her latest experiments and what they meant for her research up to the top floor, something she had been putting off for a week now, not to keen to run in either her father or her boyfriend, Bane Alen, who also happened to be the CFO. Because, clearly, her father had decided to consider the man an investment for the enterprise and wanted to tie him to Frost Industries in any way imaginable, even if this meant to push Ur into dating someone she actively disliked.

With a sigh, she closed the laboratory's door behind her and headed straight for the elevators.

There was what many people underestimated about Ur Frost: she could be very silent. Usually, she did not bother with stealth. She was the heiress to the company, she was always recognised and there was always someone who called her name while she made her way through the hallways, announcing her arrival to anyone who might have something to hide from her and giving them enough time to cover everything up. But on this day and after her conversation with Gildarts, Ur was in no mood to be questioned about budgeting issues she had no influence on anyway and so she ditched the elevator on the 35th floor and walked the last two staircases.

It was always silent on the 37th floor, the floor where only a handful of people had access to, the floor where her father and her boyfriend throned above them all. The lock hummed softly as she opened it with the keycard she had nicked from Gildarts' desk. She had been unsure for the longest time whether or not her father had set a silent alarm for her arrival, but the way he always seemed to know when she had been up there, either stopping by in the office that was technically hers or to collect her wonderful boyfriend for lunch, had implied that Octavian Frost had an interest in knowing where she was at all times. And that was nothing she liked.

Her heels made no sound on the thick carpet that covered the entire floor and she held a finger to her lips as she caught sight of one of the secretaries working at the top floor — they liked her, usually, and she had always been grateful for that. More than once, she had gotten an anonymous warning that her father was about to make a move that would hurt her objectives in time to prevent his actions to truly harm her.

She was not sure what had convinced her to sneak around the top floor, maybe it had been to prove that she could move around the headquarters without being dragged into the politics she had never been interested in, but whatever her original motivation had been, it lost its importance the moment she passed her boyfriend's office and heard a loud moan. For a split second, her blood ran cold before she exhaled slowly, reminding herself that she had known about this for a long time.

And here was another thing people vastly underestimated about her: just how petty she could be when she felt like someone had wronged her. When she had been in college, she had played a full hockey game with a sprained ankle because she had not wanted to let the girl who had stepped onto her foot know just how much that had hurt.

A grim smirk crossed her face as she turned towards the door and and she steeled herself as she approached the office — and the long overdue breakup. Really, she decided as she rested her hand against the door-handle, she should send Bane a Thank You card for doing this in a way that made it so damn easy for her to catch him. And before she could change her mind, she pushed the door open and stepped into the room, seemingly too distracted by the report she had wanted to drop off at her father's desk to see what was happening inside the room. But, oh, she did see.

What nearly surprised her was that Bane had not decided to cheat on her with his assistant. Instead, the woman who was wrapped around Ur's boyfriend, her blouse on the desk, was one of Bane's business contacts. It was slightly classier than she had expected, but she still dropped the report and gasped, pretending to be sincerely surprised.

"B-Bane?" she asked, bending down to pick up the report and allowing them both to make themselves slightly more presentable. "What ... what is going on here?"

The blond woman turned towards the man, the accusation heavy in her voice as she spoke. "You swore you were single, Bane!" she snapped, and Ur felt slightly more sympathy for her. Of course, one might wonder how anyone would believe a statement like this when her father frequently made her to attend all kinds of events with Bane as her date, but if there was someone who could spin these public events as part of an elaborate charade, it would be him. In fact, it was part of why her father liked him so much and why Bane had ever made it this far in Frost Industries.

Ur sighed deeply, crossing her arms and tucking the papers back into her folder with a near bored expression on her face. "Well, he's single now so ... don't stop on my account, I just need to drop something off at my father's desk," she said with a yawn, turning around once more. It was probably the worst breakup in the history of breakups, but she had already wasted seventeen months on this charade of a relationship and wasting another minute on it seemed utterly impossible for her.

Behind her, Bane took a step towards her, paler than she had ever seen him — probably because he knew exactly what this move meant for his career. "You'd be a fool to do that, Ur," he said softly, his hand grasping her wrist tightly. "You need me."

It was nearly ridiculous that she had no doubt that he truly believed what he was saying. But the only thing she had ever needed him for was to appease her father and since there was no way that Bane could have brought his affair up to his office without Octavian's knowledge, Ur did not care the slightest bit how her father would take the news that she had dumped the man he had chosen as his successor. "Last time I checked, I didn't need anyone," she spat, twisting her wrist to break free from his grasp. "If anything, you were the one who needed me."

Because whether she liked it or not, she was Octavian Frost's daughter and this meant that aside from access to more money than she could spent, she had access to people who were influential, people who could change lives with a handful of words. Some of these connections were the kind she had inherited from her grandmother and thus connections not even her father had, meaning that Bane indeed needed her considerably more than she would ever need him. Boyfriends of his calibre were easily found, after all.

"I'll ruin you," Bane promised, but she only shrugged as she walked out of the office and into her father's dropping off the folders on the man's desks without a word and leaving, this time taking the elevator and maintaining eye contact with her father until the doors closed. Compared to what Bane would do to her, whatever her father had in store was a bigger reason for concern because at the end of the day, he happened to be her boss.

But even this did not worry her too much because for the first time in more than a year, Ur felt comfortable in her own skin. Breaking up with Bane had been long overdue and now that it was done, she felt much, much better.

"Someone's in a better mood than usually," Gildarts commented as he slipped back into the laboratory, ten minutes late — not that she would tell anyone; a friend like Gildarts was no one she would ever sacrifice to the bureaucratic sharks of Frost Industries, the people who were all too ready to ate him alive for minor things like this.

Ur shrugged, but she could not deny the slight smile on her face. "Being single again seems to do wonders for my mood," she said casually as she stepped over to the storage room, only to feel his hand on her shoulder and to be pulled back into the room.

Gildarts' gaze was equally amused and concerned — and he was the only person she knew who could pull it off like that — but there was a certain glee in his eyes, too. "Looks like mystery neighbour finally got through to you," he mused aloud, and Ur rolled her eyes. Gildarts had had the time of his life with the existence of the mystery neighbour who kept writing the signs, especially since some of them had been vaguely hilarious — like the ones that had been rating of her arguments with Bane. Even when a joke was made at her expense, Ur could appreciate some creativity.

"More like — I caught Bane with someone else when I went upstairs," she said with a shrug and an expression that was nearly apologetic. Not that she was actually feeling bad about this breakup, quite the opposite. She was her version of ecstatic about this, but that was difficult to express for her. "He can sleep around, but he can't rub it in my face. I have some pride left."

Pride was a loaded topic between them and she knew it. Gildarts had often accused her of being too proud to just quit the entire scene she had grown up in, the scene that was so insincere, so false that sometimes, it was bordering to hilarity in a twisted way. But for her, this world had been a home for as long as she could remember and she had never been good at giving up her homes when there was some hope left.

Gildarts nodded slowly, the relief written across his face. Oh, he had never liked the idea of her dating Bane because he had never really understood why she would do this to herself. "I'm just happy he's in the past now," he said after a moment of careful consideration before he gave her his usual grin. "Can't deny that I'm curious what your neighbour will have to say about that."

She rolled her eyes as she elbowed him on her way to the supply room. "Mystery neighbour is not that important in my daily life," she said with a scoff, even though she knew that she could deny it all she wanted. In Gildarts' opinion, Mystery Neighbour was the most interesting thing that had happened in her life in a while now.

Gildarts laughed and, once more, they fell into comfortable silence as they continued their work while the hours passed by without any incidents. If Bane was already on his quest for revenge, he had not yet done something she would have to react to and she was grateful for it — Ur had a certain pattern for her work days and sudden wars with her ex-boyfriend would be difficult to fit into that schedule.

Leaving work after a long day followed also always the same routine. Ur tidied up her space, prepared two lab coats for the next day while Gildarts put away the microscopes and out their safety goggles back to their usual space near the door. They had a pattern when they were working together — a pattern that was the reason why they still could fall into this easy camaraderie, even after Gildarts was gone for months, a pattern that kept Ur's nerves from fraying too much. Afterwards, they left the building together and part ways next to the street where she flagged down a taxi and he waved before he walked towards the parking lot.

Sitting in the taxi, Ur smiled as she leaned her forehead against the cool window and nearly fell asleep, only to be shaken out of her tranquil state when the taxi stopped in front of her building and she got out, quickly, after paying the driver. Her shoulders held the tension of a long day as she greeted the doorman who handed her the daily post before she took the elevator to get to her floor. Stepping out of the elevator and absentmindedly taking note of a distinct lack of a new sign, written by the mystery neighbour, she was nearly willed to count this day as one of the better ones when she stopped and froze, almost dropping her back at the unusual sight in front of her.

Truth be told, she had not thought that she would ever see Silver Milkovich again, not after he had broken her heart and left for Peregrande to oversee the branch of Frost Industries there. Before he had left, they had dated and she had been madly in love, thinking that he felt the same way and being proven horribly wrong when he had broken up with her. Quickly, her sadness had turned into anger and she had sworn that should their ways ever cross again, she would pretend to have never seen him before in her life. But that was not truly an option as he was sitting in front of her apartment door, one hand pressed against his side as blood oozed out from the spaces between his fingers.

Hearing her steps, he looked up and tried a wolfish grin — but it fell pathetically short. He had never been good at lying to her and right now, pain was written all over his face. "Ur, hi," he greeted as he somehow managed to stand. "What a, um, surprise?"

"This is my apartment, Milkovich," she said sharply as she crossed her arms and tried to crush the tiny part of her that was happy — either because apparently, he was back or because it seemed like she was still the person he came to when he was injured, not that she had ever appreciated this aspect of their former relationship. "Me being here is not a surprise. You being in this country, however, is a surprise." She had yet to determine how she felt about this, but she had always been too soft when it came to him and so she was not particularly surprised when she unlocked the door and reached for his forearm, dragging him into her living room. "You know the drill, I'll get the first aid kit," she said as she dropped her coat and her bag on the couch and shuffled past him, fleeing into the bathroom where she closed the door for a moment of privacy.

A part of her was nearly convinced that she could hate him for this. For stumbling back into her life after years of absence, for just coming back after what he had done because he needed someone who was soft enough for him not to ask any questions. Another part of her knew better, knew that as long as the planet would spin, she would never be able to hate Silver. She could get furious with him and she could scheme to lock him out of her life, but she would never be able to lock him out of her heart.

She hissed as she retrieved her first aid kit from the cupboard next to the shower — this was infuriating. And it was unfair. She did not deserve Silver, coming back on top of all the other stressful things she was currently dealing with. Especially since this could easily claim the top spot and be much worse than Bane's threat to ruin her life and her father's impending disappointment. Silver had always had a way of getting most of her attention — and she had not liked it when she had been ten and now at thirty she liked it even less, which was — surprisingly enough — possible.

"Where do you want me?" Silver asked as she stepped back into her living room. He had lost the jacket and his shirt, though he was pressing the latter against his wound, maybe because it was common sense, maybe because he remembered that she had never liked it when he had gotten blood onto her carpets. Not that it actually mattered.

For a moment, she nearly said 'out of my life, please', but she caught herself quickly. Between the two of them, she had always known better when it was better not to say a thing. "Kitchen," she said as she bit her lip as the sight of how much red was seeping into the shirt's pale fabric. "It has the best light."

For a moment, he seemed nearly disappointed but then, he followed her into the kitchen without another word, sitting down on one of the ridiculously expensive stools Gildarts had gotten her when she had first moved in. Still unusually silent, he lifted the fabric from the wound and chuckled softly as she froze for a moment. "They got me good, didn't they?" he asked, near cheerfully — which was another thing she had always hated about him, this casual disregard for his own health, his own safety. They used to fight over this, a long time ago, but she was too tired to fight him now.

Instead, she got to work because she had always been a firm believer in the old saying of actions speak louder than words.

Over the years, Ur had seen a fair amount of injuries on her former boyfriend. He had always hated hospitals for reasons he had never bothered to explain to her and back in the day, she had been too angry with how her father had cut her medical career short not to fall for it when he teased her into playing his personal surgeon. They had fallen into a pattern, the way people like them always did, and so she had stitched him up many, many times. And usually, she had not minded it. Usually, it was something that filled her with a feeling of inner peace — because this, fixing people, was what she had wanted to do with her life for as long as she could remember.

This time, there was too much bitterness inside of her for her to find this peace in herself. She silently cleaned the wound, ignoring his pained hiss as she rubbed the desinfectant over the gash in his side and mechanically got to work, focusing solely on herself and her own breathing, and nearly managing to ignore who it was she was currently working on. This was not who she had ever wanted to be — an ice queen who could detach from someone she had once loved like she had never felt any emotion in her life, but it was who she had to be because there was no way she would ever let him determine her thoughts again. Ur had learned her lesson — and the lesson had been that whatever she did, she should never trust him with her emotions ever again.

"Will I make it?" he asked — just like back then — as she tied the final knot, his voice a little slurred from the anesthetic she had given him because she was not quite the monster some painted her to be. "And. Um. Your stitching. It's—"

"Don't," she interrupted, stepping over to the sink, pulling off her gloves and reaching for the soap. "You can't do this to me, Milkovich. You said we were through."

He groaned, burying his head in his hands. There was something positively ancient about the way he held himself in this moment; his body seemed to be made of blood-stained marble and his fatigue was the moos covering the stone. "I hurt you, I get it," he said after a moment, "but you can't pretend that I never cared about you."

She nearly laughed — an ugly, furious sound. "You don't get to rewrite this story, Silver," she replied, leaning against the kitchen counter and staring him down. Her anger, her frustration — it belonged to her, was something she had every right to be, and he had to be an even bigger fool than expected if he thought he could wipe it away with a handful of words. "You will have to take responsibility for what you did."

"You know it was not just my fault, Ur," he said, frustration seeping into his voice and making it clearer, sharper. There was more life in his voice now and in spite of herself she nearly smile — she had missed the spark inside of him because it had disappeared long before he had left her. "You wanted something I couldn't be, ever. You wanted a normal, quiet life — white picket fence, two point five kids ... all that jazz. And that has never been me. You knew that, from the very beginning. I was always honest about it."

"I never wanted you to change, you know that," she snapped as she nearly tore out her own hair. He had always been most frustrating when he had played this card, the 'you only want me for the moment, not for life' card — because she had been willed to make amends, to settle for a little less than the perfect life she had dreamed of when she had been a child and this life had sounded like paradise, like the best possible outcome.

He sighed, crossing his arms over his bandaged chest. "You were always the woman with the plan and I was always the guy who staggered after you," he said slowly, sounding a little more concerned than she would have thought. Then, she had always been ridiculously bad at predicting his next moves because he had always been far too good at taking her thoughts for a spin.

"You never told me that this was how you felt," she said as she bit her lip, trying to determine if this confession made any difference to her. If it changed anything about how he had left her when she had needed him most, if it meant anything to her. "You never seemed — unhappy."

He groaned, the sound a mixture of pain and frustration. "I was happy, believe me, happy enough not to think about the inevitable," he said slowly, scratching the back of his neck. He sounded honest and she desperately hoped that he was telling the truth because she needed him to have been happy when it was him and her, a lifetime ago.

"Did you ever miss us? While you were gone?" she asked, arms wrapped tightly around her frame. It was no question anyone should ever ask, but Ur had had no one to discuss the details of their breakup and she had never had a chance to ask the questions that required a prompt answer in her opinion. She needed to know, no matter how much it might end up hurting her. Because she had missed what they had shared, not just the great rush but also the slow moments, the three years of dinner in front of the TV, of leaving Frost Industry parties early while stealing a bottle of champagne to drink on the kitchen floor. It had been a quiet love, one she had lost herself to because it had been the opposite of what it should have been.

For a moment, he just looked back at her with the same pained expression he had had whenever someone had made him speak about his family. "Don't make me do this, Ur, please," he said slowly, pronouncing her name with the same care he used to back then. "You have no idea what you're asking about, winter."

But she did not waver. The last time they had spoken, he had had all the power on his side of the table. This time, it was different. This time, she would not let him get away with nice words about how they had outgrown each other, how they were better off without the other. "You know how much I hate not knowing something, right?" she asked slowly, arms still wrapped around herself. "So this is — not a way out, I'm afraid."

"You've obviously never been in love with yourself," he snorted, bloodied fingers tapping rapidly against the bandages around his torso. "You're hard to get over. And I missed a lot of the stupid things you do — like the flowers..." He halted and looked around, grimacing as he mentioned towards the vase on the kitchen counter and then towards the one on the coffee table in the living room. "Can't say I missed you hogging the blankets," he continued, looking back at her. "So yes, I did miss us. You, mostly."

She nodded, slowly, before she snapped herself out of her stupor. "We will discuss this another time, you need to rest," she said as she pulled the pink glitter hairclip out of her hair. "No worries, I won't make you go home ... just crash on the couch," she added with a sigh. This was a terrible call and she knew it; she should sent him on his way rather than to give him time to find a place in her life again.

But she had always been too soft when it came to him and apparently, her heart had not yet learned the lesson he had attempted to teach three years ago — that no matter how much love was in a relationship, hearts could still be shattered by a few words.

"You're an angel," he said, following her from the kitchen back into the living room.

She did not feel like an angel but rather like someone who was being a idiot, but she just shrugged as she mentioned towards the couch. "Sit," she ordered as she crossed her arms. "I'll see if I can find you a shirt."

"Not in the mood to stare at my wound for the next hour?" he asked with a grin. He definitely was not actually talking about his injury but rather about his muscular torso — something that was just as nice to look at as back in the day — but even if Ur would like to take a closer look at him, she would never admit it.

She groaned as she rolled her eyes. God, he would never change, would he? "You're once more overestimating how attractive you are in my eyes," she said with a scoff before she left him to search for a shirt in her large closet. She was pretty sure that somewhere, she should still have the shirt Gildarts had given her after someone had spilled coffee onto hers — and, sure enough, after a few minutes of intense search, she emerged from her room with the light blue shirt as her prize.

Throwing it at Silver, she grabbed her bag and pulled out her folders before she sat down at the table, determined to ignore his presence. She had been good at it when she had been much younger and she was pretty sure that she had not lost that skill. As it turned out, she was right. It certainly helped that Silver was smart enough to be quiet and not to test her patience right now because she was not sure how she would react to any disturbance — though she soon enough found out because her phone beeped softly.

**From → Gildarts**

> im in a pub and b.'s here, yelling how u only dumped him bc s. is back. care to comment?

Ur halted, dark eyes nervously flickering over to Silver who was resting on her couch — just so she could monitor him for the first few hours of his recovery or so she had said. She was not too sure how she felt about his sudden return and his confession that he had never stopped loving her while he had been gone, mostly because this was a rather Silver thing and thus likely the truth. And truth be told, the idea that maybe, she had not been wrong when she had thought that he loved her as much as she loved him, was the kind of idea she appreciate after a day like this.  
Someone had once told her that she was desperate to be loved because her father had not loved her enough when she had been a child. In fact, whenever someone had dragged her relationship with Silver through the mud, it had come down to that. To her alleged complicated stance when it came to relationships and how someone like Silver, someone who was supposedly afraid of committment, was never going to be able to fix it. Little did they know — Ur had never thought of her problems as of something that needed fixing.

**To → Gildarts**

> Silver /is/ back. He's in my apartment, right now. But I didn't dump Bane for him.

She doubted that Gildarts believed that she would have dumped anyone for Silver, not after he had witnessed her heartbreak, but she liked to make sure when it came to sensitive matters. And despite her hating this fact, her private life was a sensitive matter because far too many people were far too interested in what she did when no one else was looking, when no cameras and no press were surrounding her, trying to catch her in a moment of perceived weakess, a moment when she was less than perfect.

"Ur?" Silver asked, his voice hoarse as he raised his head. "You're still the one girl I want in my corner," he added, pushing himself up so that he could look at her, eyes as icy blue as the frozen winter skies meeting her darker ones. "And I know that I don't deserve that. But you were in my corner again today and ... thank you."

She did not tell him that if he had not left her the way he had, she would never have left his corner. Instead, she left the table and crossed the room, sitting down on the other couch. "Why does Bane know you're back?" she asked slowly, the question more important than anything else right now. Because it would lead to another important question — how long had it been that Silver had returned to Iceberg? How much time had passed between his return and his appearance in front of her apartment?

He angled his head, seemingly questioning why this was a topic now before he groaned. "Alright, so Mr Miserable ordered me back to this wonderful city — two months ago," he said, glaring at the ceiling as if it had personally attacked him in some way. "I've been mostly going back and forth, lately, but I'm coming back."

She froze because this was the last thing she had expected. There was just one reason why Bane would have summoned Silver back, considering how much they had always disliked each other — and she did not like the reason at all. Because if her hunch was right, her ex-boyfriend had had designs on proposing to her, only to rub it into Silver's face afterwards. In any other case, that would have seemed like a stretch, but this was Bane and he was capable of nonsense like this. She shuddered; she had figured that sooner or later, Bane would ask her to marry him to further boost his career, but she had not known how close the day had been.

"So you're, um, staying?" she asked, fingernails digging into her clothes. She was not sure how to feel. In fact, the last few hours had been an emotional rollercoaster for her and she was not sure if she should trust her own emotions right now. After all, a large part of them was relieved at the idea of Silver sticking around which was nothing she should be.

"I should never have left," he said as he ran a hand through his messy hair. "Not too happy about getting — lightly stabbed this early, but ... I've always preferred this city."

She grimaced and he grinned. "You know how much I hate it when you're like this," she grumbled as she nudged his foot with hers, falling back into their old patterns without actually wanting to go down that path again. "But if you prefer this city, why did you leave?"

He was quiet for a moment. "At the time, I thought it was for the best," he said slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. "I was obviously very, very wrong." He shifted his weight and sat up, sighing deeply. "I fucked up."

She nodded slowly. "Yeah, you did," she said weakly, staring down at her hands. "You really did. And I hate myself for wishing that you'll fix what you broke."

He was on his feet moments later, his hands reaching for her shoulders. "I'm trying, Ur, but you're gonna have to tell me how much you want me to fix," he said as he leaned his forehead against hers. "You haven't been happy in a while, no?"

"How would you know about that?" she asked with a frown, though a realisation slowly crept up on her. Silver had known where to find her. He also had to be someone the doorman knew or he would never have wound up in front of her apartment to begin with. In addition to this, he had said that he had returned two months ago — and the first time she had come across one of Mystery Neighbour's signs had been seven weeks ago. And hadn't Gildarts said that the wording had felt familiar?

Silver fell silent, his hand covering his mouth as a quiet 'whoops' escaped him, confirming what she had just pieced together.

"I really, really hate you," she muttered as she leaned back, closing her eyes. "You're seriously such an asshole, sometimes."

For a moment, he seemed utterly unfazed and then, he shrugged. "I was forbidden from talking you as long as Bane was in the picture," he said as he attempted an apologetic smile — something that made it ridiculously easy to forgive him for that particular stunt. "Look, you said I should come clean? Alright ... I didn't fight enough when — certain people pressured me to dump you and go to Peregrande, and that's always gonna be my biggest mistake in regards to you. I figured you'd be alright. I was wrong, I know."

"You want to know how much of this mess I want you to fix?" she asked, her hands reaching for his. "I think we should discuss that over dinner. Maybe tomorrow?"


End file.
